A thought-provoking yet humorous portrayal of culture shock

Rating: 8/10 (3 February 2014)

Bob Harris, faded movie star, visits Tokyo to shoot a commercial for Suntory whiskey. He meets Charlotte, the young wife of a visiting photographer. The two become travel companions, struggling to understand the foreign culture surrounding them and along the way, figuring out what they want in life.
This was a serious movie - it showed convincingly how a change in environment, a different way of doing things can lead us to question our lives. It spurred me to think about how exposure to foreign cultures has changed me. Yet there were a lot of humorous moments, from Bob's disbelief that the many syllables in Japanese came out to succinctly in English, to Charlotte's declaration that lunch (sukiyaki) sucked because "what kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?". With travel becoming increasingly common since the turn of the millennium, Lost in Translation is a highly pertinent movie that many of us can identify with.