An Funny, Ultimately Elegiac Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (16 September 2003)

I don't remember the last time I felt so fiercely, emotionally protective of a movie. It's too bad that we live in a time when subtlety is sometimes mistaken for boredom, but this film is anything but. It's exquisitely rendered with a knowing eye by the gifted daughter of a gifted man, who knows how to paint with quiet, hushed emotional colors. It's a bittersweet examination of two lives going in opposite directions: Bill Murray is a once popular, now fading movie star whose life, both professionally and maritally, is in stasis, while Scarlett Johannson is trying to figure out what it's all about. These two people cross paths and give each other hope and love in a crazily foreign land, and in unpredictable ways that are by turns witty, ironic, tender, and finally heartrending. Never has Bill Murray's gift for finding the pathos underlying his brilliantly hip comic sheen been so generously and perceptively uncovered. Bob Harris is a guy I can fully understand and relate to, leading his life of quiet desperation and weary resignation. The luminous Scarlett Johannson is an old soul in the body of a rapturous 19 year old who perhaps reminds Bob of what he once thought he was or could be. Charlotte brings back Bob to life for the brief time they are together in Tokyo and it's one of the sweetest, smartest, and wisest screen pairings the movies have given us in ages. What Charlotte receives from Bob is the truth about life and marriage: it doesn't get any better, just more complicated. Now that's love. Sofia Coppola and her unforgettable cast have made a film that will stay with you for a long long time.