One of the most beautiful films ever made.

Rating: 10/10 (23 March 2006)

Modern Hollywood is a business often overrun with movies that offer not much more than large explosions, gratuitous gore and sexuality, lifeless characters, and unnecessarily complex, often over the top scripts.Its times like these where it is so refreshing to see a movie where it creates incredible beauty from something simple. Lost in Translation is such a movie.
If you do not know the plot of Lost in Translation, it is simple. Bob Harris (played flawlessly by Bill Murray in a role, literally, made for him) is an American Actor in Tokyo making a whiskey commercial. Charlotte (a mesmerizing Scarlett Johansson)is a young post-graduate tagging along with her photographer husband. They are both alone and lost in a foreign place. They meet and develop a relationship that touches them for the rest of their lives.
Let me say that this movie is not for everyone. It is a movie about human experience and personal relationship. It isn't out there to entertain (although there are some VERY funny scenes), it is out there to make you feel. People who have very strong empathetic tendencies will adore this movie. This movie is about characters and the relationship between Bob and Charlotte is so authentic, so free of Hollywood trappings, its an absolute wonder to behold. Charlotte needs Bob for his humor and charm, and Bob needs Charlotte because she is a reminder of the youth he longs for in his past. Their parting ways at the end is absolutely heart-wrenching, but at the same time, makes one feel so inexplicably happy that one can't stand it. If they ever reveal what Bob whispers to Charlotte, I never want to know.
Another aspect of what makes this film so incredible is the cinematography. The shots of Tokyo are breathtaking, a contrast of the hyper-modern city of today and the Imperial majesty and beauty that was feudalistic japan. Not to mention the soundtrack- it just wouldn't be the same movies without it.
In closing I really need to remind people that you may not like this film. You may hate it. But watch it again. Try to not look at it through intellectual eyes, look at it through an emotional perspective. in order to really appreciate this movie, you must feel it.