Tuesday Night is Film Night drifts back to 2003 for this week's presentation, a drama starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson where we hopefully will find out what gets......
Lost in Translation
Where does one start with Lost in Translation? Let us get the niceties of the cast out of the way and then tackle the story. Bill Murray plays Bob Harris and Scarlett Johansson is Charlotte. Bob is a 50-something actor who although past his prime is still getting work albeit in commercials. This leads him to work in Tokyo starring in an advertising campaign for whisky. Charlotte on the other hand is the young wife of a busy photographer with an assignment in Japan and Charlotte has come along for the ride. Both Bob and Charlotte are staying in the same hotel, both are jet lagged, tired but still find sleep to be difficult.
Charlotte is bored whilst her husband is out working and Bob is morose as his work is tedious and difficult due to the language barrier. Plus his dwindling 25 year marriage is continuing to suffer due to the distance between them, that and Bob's wife seemingly nagging him via the fax machine.
Bob first spots Charlotte in the hotel lift, it pleases him to see a friendly face within a sea of distance glances and thus starts a very slow, very deliberate coming together of these two disparate souls, worlds apart in history, age and purpose, but within this juxtaposed outlook their commonality of alienation in a foreign city pulls them together.
Lost in Translation is certainly not a fast paced film and the plot, although centreing on the unlikely relationship of the two main characters, is not overbearing or complicated at all. In fact Lost in Translation is more about the atmospheric approach to the story and in some scenes it is about what the characters don't say that is important.
Bill Murray is just sublime, providing the perfect characterisation for the aging actor Bob, as he struggles with life in a different culture. And as for Scarlett Johansson, who was just 18 when this film was made, she is just perfection. Scene after scene she just looks superb, by doing very little, just a glance here and a look there, it doesn't sound much, but within the context of an atmospherically drive storyline, that is what is needed and you can really feel a sense of sexual tension even though the relationship between Bob and Charlotte is not physical.
One supposes this is why Lost in Translation works so well, the viewer clearly enjoying the chemistry between Bob and Charlotte, then wanting the thread of the story to follow the normal formulaic approach of a love story, in this case a holiday romance or a foreign fling, but Lost in Translation is not a love story per se, moreover it is a diagnosis of a relationship where two very different entities are happily dropped together clinging to the one common denominator that put them together.
The story and direction by Sofia Coppola is just brilliant, the camera work, the settings and the undercurrent of music all combine to form a beautifully shot and produced film, not overtly arty and certainly without pretension.
However, differences of opinion here at TNiFN Towers will affect the scores. Some wanted the love story to be a love story, whilst others appreciated the subtle nuances as depicted on screen, accepting that the film was more about the thoughts of the characters as the film enveloped the viewer, rather than having those thoughts translated to deeds and acted out for you.
A film for thinking and not so much doing. (Apologies for the score).
TNiFN Rating 77%
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