DVD Movie Rating for: Lost In Translation

Rating 2 out of 5 stars

Movie Plot of: Lost In Translation

Bob Harris (Murray) and Charlotte (Johansson) are two Americans in Tokyo. Bob is a movie star in town to shoot a whiskey commercial, while Charlotte is a young woman tagging along with her workaholic photographer husband (Ribisi). Unable to sleep, Bob and Charlotte cross paths one night in the luxury hotel bar. This chance meeting soon becomees a surprising friendship. Charlotte and Bob venture through Tokyo, having often hilarious encounters with its citizens, and ultimately discover a new belief in life's possibilities. b is an aging actor unsure of what his future holds. Charlotte is a young wife of a trendy photographer, not long out of college (with a degree in philosophy), unsure of what her future holds. Both are in Tokyo with days without agendas. They don't know the language. They can't sleep. They're not coping well with issues in their marriages. They don't have a clue where they are going in life.

In a cliché movie, they would find consolation in each other by having an affair in which they would find a brief happiness before returning to the obligations of their lives. In some ways, this is true of Lost in Translation. However, Lost in Translation is no cliché. Sofia Coppola has written and made a film that lets us see a new way of understanding the struggle that comes with changes in life and the ways we move through them. She does it with gravity, but also with wonderful humor.

The setting of Tokyo emphasizes the disorientation within their lives. The language is different. The customs are different. The signs are incomprehensible. There are people and lights everywhere, but for Bob and Charlotte, they are each alone within a mass of humanity.

This mirrors their private lives as well. Charlotte has the degree and a marriage that should mark her as adult, but she still has no idea what she will do. She's tried writing, but doesn't seem to be very good at it. Her husband is busy with his work, but she has nothing that is her work.

Bob has had a successful film career, but now is reduced to making a whiskey commercial for a Japanese distiller and living off his fading fame. His wife is trying to keep things going at home, but he's paralyzed even picking out a carpet color for his study.

They are both at a cusp between two eras of their lives.

In the 1970s, Gail Sheehy wrote Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. There has always been a lot of talk about mid-life crises, but Sheehy wrote about the crises that come throughout adult life -- in effect, the mid-life crises that happen in the 20’s and 30’s as well as the 40s and 50s. She likens these crises to the way a lobster grows through a series of shells, discarding them as they outgrow them and being vulnerable until a new shell develops. (Passages, p.20)

Bob and Charlotte, total strangers who find themselves trapped in Tokyo, are both at points where it is time for them to slough off their shells so they can grow into their new lives.

They may not know what they have in common, but they are drawn to each other. The affair that encompasses them is not sexual, but certainly intimate as they both struggle through their vulnerable times of growth. They joke about Bob having a mid-life crisis, when in reality, they are both undergoing their own forms of such a crisis.

As serious as this can seem, it is done with amazing humor, especially the scenes that highlight their disorientation: Bob seeing one of his old movies on TV, but can't even understand the dubbed dialogue; Bob trying to stop an exercise machine that keeps giving him directions in Japanese; taking Charlotte to the hospital for X-rays of her toe; going to a restaurant and not being able to tell the difference between the pictures on the menu.

The film is very well structured and balanced between the characters, moods, pacing. It is basically comedy (very good comedy), but has all the elements that make for tragedy. It all fits together so well that trying to talk about any one aspect leads you to talking about something else.

This is the kind of film that if it ends up on top of someone's Top Ten list for the year, you wouldn't argue, even if you saw something you liked better. It's worthy of whatever honors it may garner. I expect there will be many.

DVD Production Details of: Lost In Translation

Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray

Director: Sofia Coppola

Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Release Date: February 3, 2004
DVD Features:
A conversation with director Sofia Coppola and actor Bill Murray

"Lost on Location" - behind-the-scenes featurette including exclusive footage shot by the filmmakers

Deleted scenes

"Matthew's Best Hit TV" - an extended version of the Japanese TV show

Music video

Trailers

Widescreen anamorphic format

DVD Easter Eggs

None

Cast of the movie: Lost In Translation

• Scarlett Johansson .... Charlotte
• Bill Murray .... Bob Harris
• Akiko Takeshita .... Ms. Kawasaki
• Kazuyoshi Minamimagoe .... Press Agent
• Kazuko Shibata .... Press Agent
• Take .... Press Agent
• Ryuichiro Baba .... Concierge
• Akira Yamaguchi .... Bellboy
• Catherine Lambert .... Jazz Singer
• François du Bois .... Sausalito Piano
• Tim Leffman .... Sausalito Guitar
• Gregory Pekar .... American Businessman #1
• Richard Allen .... American Businessman #2
• Giovanni Ribisi .... John
• Diamond Yukai .... Commercial Director (as Yutaka Tadokoro)
• Jun Maki .... Suntory Client
• Nao Asuka .... Premium Fantasy Woman
• Tetsuro Naka .... Stills Photographer
• Kanako Nakazato .... Make-Up Person
• Fumihiro Hayashi .... Charlie
• Hiroko Kawasaki .... Hiroko
• Daikon .... Bambie
• Anna Faris .... Kelly
• Asuka Shimuzu .... Kelly's Translator
• Ikuko Takahashi .... Ikebana Instructor
• Koichi Tanaka .... Bartender, NY Bar
• Hugo Codaro .... Aerobics Instructor
• Akiko Monou .... P Chan
• Akimitsu Naruyama .... French Japanese Nightclub Patron
• Hiroshi Kawashima .... Bartender, Nightclub
• Toshikawa Hiromi .... Hiromix (as Hiromix)
• Nobuhiko Kitamura .... Nobu
• Nao Kitman .... Nao
• Akira .... Hans
• Kunichi Nomura .... Kun
• Yasuhiko Hattori .... Charlie's Friend
• Shigekazu Aida .... Mr. Valentine
• Kazuo Yamada .... Hospital Receptionist
• Akira Motomura .... Old Man
• Osamu Shigematu .... Doctor
• Takashi Fujii .... TV Host (as Mathew Minami)
• Kei Takyo .... TV Translator
• Ryo Kondo .... Politician
• Yumi Ikeda .... Politician's Aide
• Yumika Saki .... Politician's Aide
• Yuji Okabe .... Politician's Aide
• Diedrich Bollman .... German Hotel Guest
• Georg O.P. Eschert .... German Hotel Guest
• Mark Willms .... Carl West
• Lisle Wilkerson .... Sexy Businesswoman
• Nancy Steiner .... Lydia Harris (voice) (uncredited)

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Reviews of the movie: Lost In Translation

Let's see. Sofia marries goofy energy ball Spike who has an affair with Cameron. So Sofia kicks him out. What's the second level punishment? Create a story about Spike and Cameron where she is a ditz actress who just made a buttwigglin kunk fu movie, and he is a selfish nit in Tokyo on a shoot.

Scarlett gets to play Sofia. Bill gets to play all the movie stars who over the years have given her wisdom, but he has to be funny in his misfitting as well. She chooses to use Spike's own manner of engineered self-referential layers.

So far so good. The last time we had a public reaming of a divorced husband was Nora Ephon's `Heartburn.' But there was real talent behind that project. REAL talent.

Still, she should have been able to pull it off. Her brother pulled off something similar but more ambitious in his first film, `CQ.' Daddy can pull some strings and get some heavy help in polishing the script, assembling a crew and equipment and such.

I went into this with great expectations. Young vision has seldom had such advantages, and her first film seemed to be a clean mood piece.

Here, it all seems to have come apart. She lost focus in the act of setting it down.

She cannot decide whether she wants:

-- A tone poem on distance and discovery

-- A framework for comic and sweet vignettes from Murray (who may have been too powerful an actor for her tender disciple: there is an embarrassing slapstick scene on an exercise machine, for instance.) It must be death for an actor to hear that a part has been written for them, and without them, the movie will not be made. that means that the actor has become such a predictable caricature that someone can engineer slots for them.

-- A device to publicly work out her own issues

-- A story that becomes stronger because it skirts the predicable but then veers off into sweet `realism.'

-- A film with no story, with every element of the story undermining the very notion of story, as in the notion of Godard that she says `inspired' her.

Problem is, most of these contradict or destroy the others. And yet, there are bits of each of these in this film that excel when they are active, coming out of the basement and grabbing control one after the other. It is odd how easily we handle the mood shifts in this case.

I think that is because we assign so much to the sweet face of a young girl lost, trying to translate all these various forces into the simple ability to walk down the street with a smile.