Americans or Japanese? Your Call!

Rating: 7/10 (22 March 2015)

First of all, and I mean no offense here, I am always ambivalent (and mostly negative) about Asian resorts. There's something artistically plain about it. It's very hard to absorb. This Asian factor gave me a hard time, and I agreed with the lead cast on many judgments. I hold nothing against Asians in particular, it's just that the atmosphere depicted in the movie is truly frustrating sometime. You don't get used to Asian regions in a glimpse, and sometimes even after long periods of time. So while I somewhat loathed the whole Asian part in the movie, I concurrently loved it too, for it exacted my opinions with such clarity and conformity. Call me racist, I won't mind.
Lost in Translation mounts the romantic reformations of two affected individuals. Both Charlotte and Bob have been emotionally unstable and their banal stay in Japan makes their lives even more unbearable. With the whole Asian life going on adjacently, they find their only source of entertainment, or rather peace of mind with each other. They don't mind each other's age, or looks, although Charlotte does complain about Bob's height on one occasion. With simple conversations, they build an extraordinary relationship, which none disclose with words. I reckon Sophia Coppola found it unreasonable to vocally express the bond as it would simplify the whole concept, and I'm one-hundred percent with her on this. The moments I spent with Charlotte and Bob were one of the most memorable moments for me. Their chemistry was beyond excellent. They infused every emotion, every tension, and every reservation with such delicacy and perfection, like when Bob's shooting for the commercial—the face he makes on director's ever-going dialogs, and the face he makes while he actually shoots is both intricate and funny.
The writer obviously implies much against Asians, or is just critical of their routine. It's a rather delinquent subject for most of Asian natives, but a visionary look tells us that Lost in Translation backs opinions and views of a very wide population; people actually feel this way, and it's not a criticism, it's a suggestion to be more cosmopolitan. Sophia undertook this controversial responsibility and improvised it with immeasurable degree of acuteness and neutrality. More than anything else, she exquisitely highlight the various harsh cross-overs of lifestyles, norms, and routines of inhabitants of different regions.
Scarlett Johansson has never seduced me more. I literally despise the present-her for the amount of unspeakable she's doing to herself, her fans, and general audiences. I loved Scarlett for what she did in Vicky Christina Barcelona, Match Point and this one. Her smile was tormenting; she was an aphrodisiac (I'm getting goose-bumps.) Now, she just looks ugly. Lost in Translation is perhaps Scarlett as her best. I fell in love with her from the first scene—her rear peeking through the underwear, and her legs (get me some cold water, somebody!)
Bill Murray—I've never really liked him. The guy picks dumb roles in somewhat dumb movies. I mean he's stuck to Anderson like I'm to media. Anderson makes richly imaginative, yet dumb movies. This becomes even more frustrating when Murray gets all the mortifying characters to play. I saw his true potential for the first and only time in Lost in Translation, and although I still am not a fan of him, I've to appreciate what he's done in the movie.
With everything complementary about the movie, I still have some reservations. Will Sophia Coppola, unlike Lisa Cholodenko, come up with ideas like this? Will she ever come to the level of Woody Allen, Richard Linklater, or Alexander Payne for that matter? I guess not, and that disappoints me. This makes me think that movies like Lost in Translation might just be good-luck for Coppola, Cholodenko, and others like them, and that such movies are therefore, not works of rigorous imagination and aesthetic ability. I hope I'm wrong. But I can't be; it's 2015 and Coppola hasn't done anything else that extraordinary so far. I'm worried.