Waltertainment

LOST IN TRANSLATION(***1/2)
Starring Bill Murray, Scarlett Johanssen
Directed by Sophia Coppola(The Virgin Suicides)

About: Two strangers meet in a Tokyo hotel bar and discover they have more in common then nothing to do.

Ever been alone in a hotel room on some trip and you look out from the 40th story hotel window into the city night to see the millions people behind the millions of lights in that fabulous exotic city and you feel…all alone? That’s this movie.

Bill Murray, in a more humanized and subtley tortured version of his deadpan self, plays a has-been action movie star named Bob Harris who’s in Tokyo for a week to collect $2 million bucks to do a whiskey ad. Enter Scarlett Johanseen who plays Charlotte, a young
newlywed who’s photographer husband is in and out of their hotel room as she wonders whom she married. They notice each other always hanging out at the hotel bar and strike up a why-not since we’re both bored friendship that grows into something deeper.

Bob is having a mid-life crisis of sorts and resentfully puts up with over eager Japanese handlers, bizarre talk show hosts and odd call girls, not to mention his distant wife, emotionally and literally. But he still has his sense of humor. His lone respite is the hotel bar and his new friend Charlotte. Charlotte is bored and lost. Lost in her new marriage.
Lost in her purpose in life(she was a Yale philosophy major). And lost in Tokyo. Hence, they bond.

There’s not much plot. That’s what’s fascinating about this movie. It’s not about she needs to do this and then this gets in the way Hollywood narrative story engine. It’s about people doing normal things and slowly learning about the stranger they’re doing them
with along the way. The casual conversation on the way back from the pool. Going to a friend’s party. Screwing around at the karoake bar.

Eventually you discover that this cool new friend is just as lost as you are. Your lives certainly don’t suck. They just don’t amount to much. At least not to anything that matters. It’s this connection between them, built while chasing away boredom, that serves as a quasi love story come friendship slash self-discovery journey.

Sofia Coppola directs this with an almost stream-of-consciousness vibe. Far from visually lyrical like a pretentious art film, it’s more emotionally lyrical and introspective. Lots of shots of the city night from high above, the orgy of Japanese neon, and shots of the actors staring at themselves in the mirror, or the city, or each other. A lot of this movie is about what’s behind those stares. They spend time together and longingly stare at each other but don’t flirt. But still there’s a connection between them that’s impossible to ignore.

You wonder if they’ll get together but you hope they don’t. That would be movie-typical and in this case, wrong. But like all ships that pass in the night the transience ends as a cue to get back to their inevitable lives. But not before Bob quietly whispers something into Charlotte’s ear which we are not privy to.

A cheat? Hardly. That’s what this movie is about, deciphering the emotions behind the stares. Stares out the window. Stares up at the neon. Stares at the strangers in the hotel bar. Stares at each other. And knowing what it feels like to be surrounded by millions of people in a fabulous hotel and still feel all alone. Except for that one person who stares back and knows exactly how you feel.