Absorbing

Rating: 10/10 (27 April 2006)

Sofia Coppola chooses to open her second picture with the unexpected appearance of Scarlett Johansson's semi-naked buttocks. On the big screen, it's impressive, and on any other screen, it manages to entice. But this is just the beginning. In many ways, it doesn't even seem that. The image is seductive but dislocated -- it's just there. Then the title credit appears: "Lost In Translation". It's like Coppola is having some massive joke at our expense. What's there to translate about such a sight -- much less to lose in translation? We're immediately intrigued by the voyeuristic nonchalance of it. It is this same casualness, hiding real intent, that shapes and sustains the picture. For at its heart, "Lost In Translation" is a hypnotic tone poem for desire and the need to reach out and find meaning. The butt-image functions as a motif: in the bold sensuousness, yet comic randomness of it, we are being made to lust for something -- but we are at a loss to make sense of it, just as the film's characters find themselves lusting for things they can't readily define.
So begins our journey. "Lost In Translation" unfolds with a jazzy rhythm and soft-spoken sultriness beyond the capacity of words. This is cinema as water, as smoke and as ether. Coppola positions her camera as if capturing real events for the first time. You rarely, if ever, get the sense that anything has been staged. So skilled is Coppola at doing so that it becomes easy to take it for granted. But this dreamy documentary style has also alienated some. While there is a plot at work, the film makes no concessions to big dramatic flourishes or rousing set pieces (or even memorable dialogue). Fortunately, for those that understand and appreciate Coppola's schemata, this is all to her and her film's credit. Lance Acord's photography, in being nothing short of stunning, ably assists her. Light and colour are mixed like a soothing beverage in every scene. "For happy times, make it Suntory times", Murray smoothly intones, and the photography never fails to provide a visual equivalent. The sound design is also exceptional. When Murray's character receives a fax, you can hear every click and whir; when he shuts off a TV, that familiar yet subtle dimming of the phosphor can be made out; when Murray enters a lift, we can hear every mechanism and every rush of air as it transports him from one four-walled maze to another.
But, if that's all the film had to offer, it would generate no meaning, no heart, no soul. It is the brilliant performances of Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray that carry the film through. Scarlett Johansson plays your "average" girl with classical movie star looks. Bill Murray literally is a movie star, comically trapped in an extended jetlag; a sleepy haze; a passive-aggressive nightmare he can't snap out of. He's never been funnier. Even his character's commonplace names, "Bob" and "Harris", suggest a man cruelly fated to reach this misanthropic point in life. But both characters, despite their rich backgrounds and self-absorbed natures, are also achingly human: their quiet dilemma, a primal scream from their insides that's already reduced to silence by the time it reaches their outsides, gives the film texture and intrigue. We're involved with them. We care about them. We connect to them. There are moments of incredible honesty from both. We can see that when Charlotte tells her husband that she loves him, she really does mean it. But Bob's allegiances are initially harder to suss. Watch after he carries Charlotte back to her room. He hesitates at the door for a moment -- should he stay? Later on, when the two are sat alone in a strange inner-city apartment, Bob sheepishly looks to his side, as if contemplating whether to initiate something with Charlotte or not. Yet in Bob's subsequent conversation with Charlotte on the bed, in spite of his later sexual liaison, we can tell that he, like Charlotte, truly loves his significant other.
One interesting thing in all of this: obnoxious charges of racism have been levelled. But such charges are crude slurs against the film's beautiful tapestry. Its concerns are profoundly human ones, and in every such case, the sharp square peg of racism cannot fit into the circular hole of reality. "Lost In Translation" laments the fact that these characters are lost amidst such a dazzling culture, just as it laments and pokes fun at the culture that's at least partially responsible for causing their alienation. Thus, we have one of several meanings for the title. Another might be that being lost is a scary thing: the film tenderly juxtaposes the uniqueness of individuals against a sea of noise (as in the magnificent shot of Charlotte looking out of her window onto the city). We're all unique -- but how easy it is to forget that or lose touch of the ones we love in such a vast and impersonal world? On a broader level, of course, "Lost In Translation" also refers to the notion of needing a true simpatico for communication. This is not a single-layered or one-sided motion picture by any stretch of the imagination.
A review of this film wouldn't be complete without a few remarks on the soundtrack. None of the songs, save the literal karaoke renditions, are particularly striking or conventional -- but they achieve something greater by seeming to glide across the screen, momentarily giving us a lift, and then disappearing again, like Charlotte and Bob first spotting each other and raising smiles, before walking off, in that crowded elevator. This is cinema that doesn't need nor want to shout -- it glances and whispers. Even the simple white credits have a serenity and fade on and off like the flickering lights of Tokyo or the moods of the people we're being shown. Nothing jars. Everything meshes. This is a quiet masterpiece.