Movie Malcontent / LOST IN TRANSLATION

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LOST IN TRANSLATION / Malcontent's Mark: A-

September 10th, 2003

Bob Harris: Bill Murray
Charlotte: Scarlett Johansson
John: Giovanni Ribisi
Kelly: Anna Faris

Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola.
Rated R

I’ve seen the future and in February 2004, Bill Murray will finally win his Oscar nomination for Best Actor. If there ever were a showcase for Murray’s talents, Lost in Translation is the one. He was superb in Rushmore, but as Translation’s Bob Harris, an American movie star in Tokyo to shill multimillion-dollar endorsements, he knocks every scene out of the park.

Director Sophia Coppola was a genius to realize that plopping Murray in Tokyo would be the perfect vehicle for his talents. No one can play bemused tolerance and ultra-dry recognition of absurdity like Murray. Although the senses are bombarded in the hyper-kinetic, neon-saturated Tokyo, he plays the straight man with aplomb. Just seeing Murray’s wizened face among the cheery hordes of Tokyo residents should tickle anyone.

Lost in Translation is the story of a muted love affair between a middle-aged man, Bob, twenty years into a marriage and a young woman, Charlotte, two years into a marriage. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is a Yale philosophy grad in Tokyo with her husband, John (Giovanni Ribisi), a photog who regularly leaves her alone in their hotel room while he shoots rock groups and starlets. Harris and Charlotte are staying in the same hotel and notice each other one night in the hotel lounge.

And glances at each other over a series of nights is how their relationship begins. Eventually, they have brief conversations over a series of nights. And later, they have longer conversations. They fall in conversation as two strangers most likely would, with no certainty how the conversation will end.

We see Harris as someone who remains detached from his environment; he’s going through the motions and he’s grown accustom to life on auto-pilot. The only person he responds to with any sincerity is Charlotte. And Bob’s moments with her, achingly tender in the most subtle ways, show that Murray’s mastery of deadpan delivery works well in showing both melancholy and guarded idealism. It’s saying a lot about Johansson that the 18 year old actress matches Murray every step of the way.

What prevents the film from falling into your typical doomed affair between the disenchanted is that both people feel genuinely bound to their spouses. Although Bob is weary with his spouse, and Charlotte feels shut off from hers, they understand the risks in throwing off the bowlines and leaving the safe harbor of marriage, especially when Tokyo serves as a sprawling alien world. Everyone fears isolation; even though Bob and Charlotte become each other’s anchors in the foreign metropolis of Tokyo, they know any fleeting consummation would eventually lead to further isolation.

Coppola’s sets the film on slow simmer, allowing the attraction between the two leads to be genuinely earned. When modern romances are shellacked with contrived melodrama, Coppola fortunately forbids any emotional indulgences. And when most romances make sexual intentions transparent, Coppola allows ambiguity between Bob and Charlotte. Although warm with each other, they remain intelligent and independent, always cautious of the other’s emotions, protecting themselves by remaining at arm’s length. Their emotions never artificially take over, as they so often do in your typical romance.

Coppola is accomplished enough to sustain a heady tone. For its full 90 minutes, the film floats. Translation is the film equivalent of driving down an open road after midnight with the windows rolled down. The score, produced by Brian Reitzell, is dreamy and airy, perfect accompaniment for the alternating images of night-drenched Tokyo and the city in golden sunrise. Translation often plays like an insomniac’s tour of Tokyo.

In some ways, Lost in Translation is like the bizarro-world version of The Graduate. In Mike Nichol’s film, the college graduate Ben Braddock is seduced by the middle-aged married woman, Mrs. Robinson. In Translation, Bob is delicately seduced by Charlotte, yet she seduces not with sexual advances, but with her ingénue innocence and ambivalence. To correspond with Braddock’s despondent swimming pool submersion, there are many moments where Bob hangs on the rim of a pool or the edge of a hot-tub, seemingly afraid to submerge himself. And like the famous bus scene at the end of Nichol’s film, there are many moments where the camera lingers on Bob and Charlotte long after the dialogue is over.

And the lack of contrived camerawork and character blocking is where the film works best. The camera acts as a spectator, surreptitiously witnessing the hesitant, sometimes stilted dialogue between Johansson and Murray. It also takes in some hilarious moments of cultural dissonance between Murray and Tokyo’s fringe dwellers. Coppola captures the moments of wry wit and spontaneity that one would expect when spending an all-nighter with Bill Murray.

My only concern is sometimes the camera lingers too long in some sequences. At times, it feels as though Coppola included some bits simply because she enjoyed filming them, rather than their significance to the story. And what redeems some of these superfluous scenes is how Translation also works as a comedy of errors, Japan’s and ours. There’s a hilarious scene between Bob and a hotel-delivered call-girl whose approach is outrageously melodramatic. Also, the scene with Harris attempting to have a conversation with an old man in a hospital waiting room shows Murray at his ad-libbing best, even making the extras behind him crack up.

Lost in Translation is a skillfully composed love story, delicately combining melancholy with whimsy, heartbreak with euphoria. The Oscar-worthy performances of Murray and Johansson show us how we can disclose our deepest personal details to complete strangers, but ironically not to our spouses.

And in the end, both weighted down by the brevity of their splendor, the two muddle through an imperfect good-bye, sensing that there’s more to be said. But that’s only the build to the film’s subtle crescendo. Bob leaves his taxi in the street to run after Charlotte. They embrace and he whispers something in her ear, and the audience isn’t allowed to hear what he says. It’s a mark of Coppola’s achievement that we don’t feel cheated by not hearing Bob’s last words to Charlotte. Coppola has made Harris and Charlotte so real, we want to respect their privacy. They deserve a private moment beyond the bounds translation.

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