Let's never come here again because it will never be as much fun.

Rating: 9/10 (27 June 2009)

Bob Harris is in Tokyo to shoot a whiskey commercial. Tired and fed up with his life, he meets an unhappy young wife by the name of Charlotte. Both these jaded souls who are wary of the alien city they are staying in, start to form a friendship that goes deeper than either of them could ever have dreamed possible.
I'm a late comer to this movie, only just catching it some six years after its release. With that revelation out the way, I have to say I'm rather annoyed that I didn't let this simple, but beautifully tender picture into my life before now. Lost in Translation has proved to be a most divisive picture, but outside of its overuse of stereotyping Asians for its laughs, I personally don't see any faults. In a time, both then and now, when blockbusters were {are} the main stay of bread winning cinema, Sofia Coppola's film is the perfect anti-dote for those tired by sledge hammer cinema. Blending themes such as fidelity and generational divides is a neat enough premise in itself, but cloaking it in commercialism and a hazy jet lagged fog is something of a masterstroke from Coppola {who also wrote and produced}.
What makes this such an intriguing and delicate film is not that it's essentially two different people finding each other, because anyone can make a love story, doomed or otherwise. But that in a film that its detractors claim "nothing is happening", it's in fact saying so much. Coppola, by way of two top notch performances from Scarlett Johansson {Charlotte} and Bill Murray {Bob} transports complex ideas superbly. Hope springs eternal for our characters, the problems of communication around them are evident, but in their newly formed world it folds together nicely, secular can be such a special and uplifting thing. The joys of pop music is also brilliantly put on to the screen by the makers, including a quite lovely sequence set around karaoke. Here the beauty of a human connection is well and truly realised.
The comedy, of which there is loads, is made to measure for Murray and his sarcastic line in grumpy mid life crisis-with Coppola showing great restraint by knowing when and how to drop it into the mix. The soundtrack is first rate, with the use of The Jesus And Mary Chain's sumptuous "Just Like Honey" at the films pivotal moment, being pure genius, and the Tokyo location is a ball of light feast for the eyes. But ultimately it's because of its elegance and its multi stranded themes that Lost In Translation won so many fans back in 2003. I myself am glad to now count myself as one of their number. 9/10