A Quiet, Personal Film

Rating: 8/10 (8 August 2005)

Being in a profession where there is constant noise, I enjoyed this movie for a very odd reason. The characters are pulling away from a hyped up society, away from a world, much of which is based on needless, trivial noise. Everywhere they go there is more numbing action. Watching the director of the commercial gyrating, trying to act like a real film director, despite the fact that they are doing a 30 second liquor commercial, typifies some of what this movie is about, a world where people are worn into the ground by a type A culture that is as vapid and unnecessary as we can imagine. I thought the Bill Murray character developed tremendously. While this trip to Japan was excruciatingly dull (money isn't everything), I believe that he began to see things he hadn't seen before. I liked that while he was struggling with his marriage, the crises were simple, day to day things that living brings to us. The young woman he meets shows through a whimsical kindness, that he is worth something. She is refreshing to look at an to be with. He, like many middle aged men, has self doubts. Because she has a sense of purity and can talk to him honestly about her world and his, he should go back to his life a little more sustained.