Americans in Wonderland?

Rating: 8/10 (25 November 2006)

"Lost" means feeling confused to time, place or one's identity. Without any planning, what if you woke up in a foreign country? It was clean, dreamingly beautiful and artistically and professionally designed yet nothing is familiar to an American: the time is flipped as compared to American, no surrounding announcement or instructions were understandable because it was in a foreign language. Provided translation was too simple to explain the whole situation. It was a place where people could tie their wishes to an actual tree, sing karaoke with their friends in an elevator bar, use Zen stones as hopping steps when crossing a pond and where people could see fireworks on balloons? Would you feel lost there?
Many American would, just like the two main characters did in Lost in Translation. This was a beautiful story about two Americans in Japan: Charlotte (Johansson), the curious young woman, often portrayed in pink transparent underwear, fresh out of Yale with a degree in philosophy, was in Tokyo, with her husband, a photographer whose work takes him away that week. Bob Harris (Murray), the jaded and melancholy mid-50s, a semi-retired movie star with a wife and young children, was in Tokyo to make $2 million doing a whiskey ad. alone. Charlotte and Bob were far apart in age yet the art of "feeling lost" drew them close in heart. On the surface, they were lost because of their culture shock experiences in Japan. In fact, they were confused because of a different kind of culture shock: they felt disoriented at certain unfamiliar point of their life.
Once again, LIT was beautifully photographed: the exotic Japanese culture was vivid. There was a giant digital diplodocus motioning across the wall of high rise buildings, there were ivory hydro-trains taking people pass by world famous, gorgeous Fuji Mountain and there were ancient Buddhist shrines of deity delivering holy bell rings.
Sofia Coppola did a great job in unfolding the meaning of "lost" and "translation". Johansson and Murray could really show you how lost Americans could be in foreign culture and in the translation of one's own life. Americans in Wonderland! A beautiful movie, inside and out!