Truly beautiful (and the comments below only confirm its universality!)

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2004)

Agggghhh.... I can't help feeling that the misunderstood comments below (on racism, etc) only serve to confirm what this film was all about.
For me, the whole fulcrum of this film was the philosophical idea that in the (post)modern world, all external objects and feelings can never be truly communicated and have therefore 'lost' their meaning! The depressing thought that we are all ultimately alienated from the world outside our heads.
This was why Coppola chose Japan as the most perfectly apt setting for her film. If anything her vision of Japan was that of a japanese cultural nationalist, NOT a racist. The idea is of the alienating and meaningless decay of Western culture where everyone is ultimately alienated from everyone and everything. (The irrefutable evidence for this is the peaceful and harmonious scene where Charlotte visits Kyoto the spiritual home of Japan as opposed to the absurdist 'Western' capital)
SPOILERS AHEAD
To miss this is to miss the essential and beautiful climax of the film!! Throughout the story we find the absolute and impenetrable alienation of the two central characters within their lives. Both have 'lost the meaning' of their marriages, both have lost meaning to their lives (note Charlotte's bed speech). The Japanese karaoke is Coppola's ultimate metaphor for this: loads of people dansing around singing without the slightest idea of the meaning of what they are singing. Also Bob's sex with the cabaret act has little or no meaning.
This is the beauty of the final scene. The embrace of the two protagonists is for me one of the most triumphant moments of recent cinema: Without allowing us to hear their words (as if we heard them we too would have no connection to their meaning as we cannot experience them) Coppola shows how they have triumphed over the alienation of the external word through a shared empathy with each other that cannot be removed by any future experience - even though it is only fleeting.
In short to talk of racism is for me to miss the whole point of this truly beautiful film! But such misunderstandings only reinforce its essential point of the uselessness of language and communication, etc.

(Rant over - sorry about that)