Finding a Lost Translator

Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" enlists with the likes of "Lawrence of Arabia," "Ju Dou," "Princess Mononoke" and etc. in the canon of movies that really incorporate tremendously beautiful and powerful images in a real sense that approaches eclipsing - if not trumping altogether - the movie's content. Where most movies sacrifice successful image development for the flashiness of tech-ed up chase scenes and for the jumpy and the vertigo-instigating, these movies, amongst select others, paint tremendous pictures, almost more like a moving slideshow than a movie.

"Lost" investigates the loneliness and the unease inherent in a stay in a foreign country, in this case Japan, and it loyally trails Bob Harris (Bill Murray) - a middle-aged actor visiting in Japan, making the big bucks acting in commercials for Suntory whiskey - with particular attention to how his relationship unfolds with Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), the gorgeous wife of an accomplished photographer named John (Giovanni Ribisi), who finds little time for her.

Bob has "a midlife crisis in Japan - where it's already so confusing," and "Charlotte is having that early 20s, 'what do I do with my life' crisis," says Coppola in an interview. "She and Bob are two people at opposite ends of something comparable; she's just going into a marriage and he's on the other end, having been in one for years. There is camaraderie between them at the moment in time that they're at."

In this reviewer's mind, the camaraderie does not stand center stage; the images of the city, as the camera captures the seas of umbrellas, the incongruous whiskey ads, the ever-blinking, hypnotizing lights, the cars and narrow, crowded streets, the restaurants and the Buddhist temples trump the characters, dwarfing them not only in scale but also in intensity.

The characters interact gawkily with the city, splitting their time between staring down at it from atop their many story high perches like gargoyles and between walking about at street level longing to fade away and to reoccupy their bubbles high above the city. Charlotte travels with headphones which help her eradicate herself from the scene; Bob carries his pessimistic sarcasm to hide behind.

Music in fact binds the two hermits together, but the karaoke music and the cds do not bind so much as the city's beating heartbeat. Somehow the city itself on a grand scale, and the Tokyo Hyatt on the smaller one, controls the characters. "It was inspired by spending time in Japan in my early and mid-20s," says Coppola. "I like the idea of how, in hotels, you keep running into the same people...And being foreigners in Japan - things are distorted, exaggerated. You're jet-lagged and contemplating your life in the middle of the night."

As the viewer contemplates the two loners, she gets to asking herself about fidelity. Did Bob cheat on his wife? Did Charlotte cheat on her husband? With the caveat that it is unclear that the movie consents to a moral code to begin with, it seems that quite literally and legally Bob has cheated on his wife. He cheated with the wrong girl though, one "closer to your age" Charlotte tells him in a sushi bar. All Bob and Charlotte share is a hug at the end - a completely asexual, and a quite paternal act.

And yet both were simultaneously faithful and adulterous. Bob cheats on his wife, whom the one time he actually declares his love to in the entire course of the movie he ends up speaking to a dial tone, but he is loyal to the higher aesthetic call of the city. The call that finally puts a smile on his face, and drags him kicking and screaming along a journey worthy of Carroll's White Rabbit through singing sessions, circumventing his "bodyguards" and generally up and about town. We can hardly indict Charlotte, who declares the purpose of her Japan visit "to visit friends" in response to Bob's less sincere "seeing friends" and "missing my son's birthday," with promiscuity, she simply makes a friend, although she definitely melds a deep bond with Bob.

Somehow, the moral lessons and the older guy -- younger girl questions all collapse under their own weight; the movie is simply not about that. Come looking for an array of gripping images, a very telling scrutiny of the city - resident relationship and a psychological mood that recalls Rolvaag and Steinbeck, and it will not disappoint.

Lost in Translation For more about showtimes and show information, visit http://www.lost-in-translation.com/