If you connect... chills guaranteed for 105 minutes

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2006)

105 Minutes, because the chills will continue even during the movie titles if you keep on listening to the music and thinking about what you have just watched. This movie is about feeling what this people go thru and feel. A lot (LOTS) of silent language, every little detail is well thought to connect to an open audience, and certainly Scarlett and Bill did an awesome job to translate into the silver screen their strong feelings. I read some comments that talk about "after marriage", I think this movie goes much beyond feelings once you are married and have kids. It's about life your whole life. I can relate to some passages where thru the character actions there's strong stresses on enjoying the moment, and soon after that the futility of the moment itself once the joy fades you feel that. It hits you in the guts! And then the next moment comes, and so on. And we are talking about extremely *simple* moments, not the typical emotional movie that tries to hit with deep stuff. The overall feeling while watching this movie is that you don't want the movie to end, the same thing the characters don't want their stay in Tokyo to finish, you can actually feel that. You can feel the pain they carry every time they come to grips with the realization that their time in Tokyo will be gone and they may never see each other for the rest of their life. The movie also clearly conveys the message that is not about the place, but the people that matters. First Bob Harris will show some indifference towards the place and Charlotte will show the typical curiosity of youth. Those feelings slowly translate into joy, love for the place even love for the food (I know, they didn't like Shabu Shabu because you have to cook it yourself :) and ultimate a metaphysical love for each other that can't be described with words. I will try to summarize the type of people who might enjoy this movie (if you don't fit in any description, you might enjoy it as wellwho knows): 1) Got married and kept on thinking about the meaning of love, what's marital love, what's true love kept on meditating on love in general and see yourself on that path for the rest of your life. 2) Got married and ever fear about loosing that connection to your other significant being (after all 50% of marriages in the US crumble at some point...) 3) Got kids and got the feeling suddenly you got to some extent "sidelined", something typical of today's society with the pressures that a career puts on the main financial provider of modern western families. 4) Ever felt Platonic Love, with the extreme joy and pain which it represents if it finally didn't get realized. 5) Ever traveled alone to foreign cultures and felt the loneliness feeling of being a complete foreigner (in all sense of the word). 6) Have the capacity to enjoy movies with simple themes well brought to the movie screen in terms of script, music, sound, editing, etc probably 97% of critics who acclaimed this movie fit this description.
After I finished watching, I couldn't get enough of it; sadly I come to the realization that it will be extremely hard for any other producer/director to match Lost in Translation, even Sofia sorry Sofia, you did too good, your bar is so high now!