When Bill Met Scarlett...

Rating: 10/10 (26 February 2004)

This review has been seriously edited to remain within IMDb's word limit. Please refer to wiredonmovies.com for complete, and much better, review.
"I just don't know what I'm supposed to be." "You'll figure that out. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less things upset you."

Dialogue from "Lost in Translation"

When you're young you think you know what you want to be. When you're out of college you suddenly realize that what you wanted to be was an unrealistic fantasy. Then, when you're old and frail, you look back upon your life and see that you wasted everything with worry and ended up becoming something you never wanted to be. You could have been what you wanted to be all along--you were just too scared and naive to realize it. In a way, you were at your smartest when you were young, even though you thought it was the exact opposite when you were older. And now that you're really old, you realize that you're also a lonely old person who wasted their life.
I imagine that 50-something Bob Harris looked at 20-something Charlotte and saw a bit of himself in this woman. Their relationship wasn't so much physical as it was subtle and romantic. Their conversation about the future and what it holds is one of the fine points of American cinema. The people who say, "He's too old for her!" miss the point. Love knows no bounds. But they're not just feeling love anyway--they identify with each other, something they don't with their current spouses. ("I don't know who I married!" says Charlotte. She isn't married to Bob Harris but she knows him more than her own husband by the end of the film.)
Indeed, the film's true points are lost on many viewers who see it is a film bashing Japan, or a boring character piece, or a stupid metaphor for some larger picture that audiences don't care about. They should. Because a lot of true things about life are in "Lost in Translation." The title implies more than it seems to after an initial glance.
Sure, it has to do with an older man falling in love with a younger woman, but there relationship is never Hollywoodized. They both know there's a boundary they fear to pass. Look how they stare at each other with hesitation at the closing of each meeting. They want to express their true feelings, but marriage and age are both holding them back.
Harris is played by Bill Murray. He's a frustrated, lonely, sad, droopy, middle-aged, washed-out actor visiting Tokyo to promote a brand of Japanese whisky. ("You know Rat Pack?" his Japanese director asks him. "Oh, yeah, sure. A ring-a-ding-ding.")
Charlotte is played by Scarlett Johansson. She's a young lady who is visiting Tokyo with her husband John (Giovanni Ribisi), who is a photographer and leaves her in a fancy hotel for a few days when he must leave for a photo shoot session.
What essentially follows is an unconventional love story in the vein of "Harold and Maude," only more realistic. The two main characters soon find themselves falling for each other, although not at all in the way that you are undoubtedly imagining after reading that sentence. No, the two people in this film--and I call them people because they are more than just characters to any person watching the movie--are too real to fall into the clichéd Hollywood love story rut, where there's a lot of romantic discussion and some passionate interludes. Without spoiling much at all, neither of these characters sleeps with each other. We don't know if they're going to sometimes, but to see such a refreshingly original and realistic love story--where the two people don't fall into a bed caressing each other minutes after meeting--is exciting. It's as if we've returned to the core of all romance films. Finally, no more stupid Hugh Grant rubbish--here's a real love story. Tender, intriguing, interesting, and realistic, powered by two alarmingly convincing performances. (Murray is somewhat himself in this movie, but also adds some more sadness to his character; Johansson, really a 19-year-old actress, is amazingly mature and acceptable.)
Many of the characters from "Lost in Translation" are supposedly based on true people. For example, Charlotte's husband, John, is based on Sofia Coppola's ex-husband, Spike Jonze (director of "Being John Malkovich"), who directed Cameron Diaz in that film and, according to her fans, had an affair (somehow I doubt it, but...you never know). Kelly, the ditzy blonde movie star, is allegedly based on Diaz--which has not been confirmed, of course, but just reported in interviews and from fans who "overheard her talking." Hmm....We'll never know for sure, but the caricatures are seemingly blatant enough. No translation is needed to separate the facts from fiction.
Whether or not Sofia Coppola is just trying to tell a mass audience that she was an abandoned wife is up to speculation. Some may cringe at the way she so blatantly molds her characters after real people. But whatever her purpose was with "Lost in Translation," she has certainly succeeded, creating the best film of the year--more touching than any installment of "The Lord of the Rings," more dramatic than "Big Fish," and funnier than a lot of the crude comedies you're likely to find out there. Here's a movie that refreshes the audience in a way that makes them unsure of what they're feeling. The climax is a sort of loose end, as if Coppola is letting the audience translate what is going to happen to these two characters for themselves. Each to his or her own, I suppose. Either way, we're not supposed to undoubtedly know what is going to happen. And for me, that is quite brilliant.
5/5 stars

John Ulmer