A very good to great film; if you don't like it, you don't get it

Rating: 9/10 (9 October 2003)

To view Lost in Translation with enough depth to understand it, you have to have some depth yourself. That isn't meant as an insult. In college I took a creative writing class (at the time I wanted to be a writer and I was pretty good, technically) and wrote several short stories as part of the class. After the instructor read three or four of these, he called me aside to talk about my writing and said this: "You know what you need? You need to fail." I was shocked and insulted, but for years wondered about what he said and why he said it. Now, 20 years later, I am sure I know what he meant. He meant that my life had been a pretty good one, with few disappointments, and as a result I didn't have the depth to write something truly emotional and meaningful, yet, no matter how good I was technically. I became a journalist.
The same is true for Lost in Translation. These user reviews which call the movie boring are missing out, probably through no fault of the reviewer. If you have never been isolated in a truly foreign environment (I have, in China, among others), or have never truly wondered whether the path you are beginning or ending was the right one (including marriage or career choices), and have never met up with a stranger who seemed to "get" you even though you both know back home you probably wouldn't even have talked, then this movie will probably seem dull.
To me, it was a moving story about two people who connect briefly but not in the lame Hollywood sexual manner. These people talk, and observe and wonder out loud. And when they part, they are sad beyond all normal expectation.

Lost in Translation had one scene -- involving kareoke -- that I thought went on too long. But everything else was almost perfect. To have people speak in Japanese, often with no translation, drives home the isolation one feels in that environment if you are not Japanese. To see Charlotte pace, and sit, and be bored, shows what happens when you are alone in a strange place with no agenda. I've been there. It is EXACTLY like this.

I think I heard the second half of what Bill Murray whispers at the end. If I did, I liked it. SPOILER ALERT: It sounded like he said, 'No matter what happens, tell the truth."
If he did, that phrase has meaning on several levels, just like the movie. What a great film. I gave it a 9.