Is that It? A comedy without Humour and a Drama without Action

Rating: 4/10 (3 April 2004)

Contains spoilers
`Lost in Translation' is a film about two Americans who meet while on brief visits to Tokyo. Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a famous film star who has gone to Japan to make a whisky commercial. While there, he meets and forms a platonic friendship with Charlotte, the young wife of a photographer, who is staying in the same hotel. Then they return to America and. well, that's it, really.
This is clearly a film that has sharply divided public opinion. On one side are the Academy who nominated it for several Oscars, including Best Picture, and all those who have voted it into this site's top 250 films. On that other side are me and my wife (although I see from a number of negative comments that we are not quite alone), who just could not understand what all the hype was about. When the film ended and the final credits started to roll, we looked at one another and asked `Is that it?'

The title `Lost in Translation' would suggest that this is a film about cultural misunderstandings and differences in outlook between different races, but this element in fact played only a small part. Certainly, Harris often seems bewildered by what is going on, particularly in the scene where he is being shouted at by the Japanese director, but it hardly seems a profound insight to point out that if you travel to a foreign country where you don't speak the language, you are going to miss out on a lot of what is being said. The Japanese dialogue is not subtitled, so a Western audience will not understand what is being said any more than Harris does. There are a few picture-postcard shots of Mount Fuji and old temples, but this is not really a film about Japan or about American/Japanese relationships. Sofia Coppola is more interested in the relationship between Harris and Charlotte.

Unfortunately, that relationship is not a very interesting one. Comparisons with `Brief Encounter' are not very illuminating. David Lean's film has always been, in my opinion, something of an overrated classic, but at least it did tell the story of two people's genuine love for each other, even if that love was not expressed sexually. Harris and Charlotte, by comparison, never get as far as falling in love, let alone making love. All we have is the story of a brief friendship between two people bored by their stay in a foreign country. Not only is the relationship uninteresting, the two main characters arouse little interest either. Bill Murray plays Harris as a grumpy middle-aged man suffering from a severe case of culture shock. He seems to wear a permanent expression of morose surprise that Tokyo is not an exact replica of Peoria, Illinois. His only interest in Japan is in the money he will get for his commercial. Rather than take the opportunity to explore a new culture, he simply retreats into himself and clings to a fellow-American like a safety blanket. As for Charlotte, I found her character difficult to believe in. She strikes up a friendship with Harris because she is feeling ignored by her husband, but it seemed unlikely that anyone would ignore a young woman so obviously beautiful and intelligent. Scarlett Johansson's luminous performance in `Girl with a Pearl Earring' came close to perfection, but in `Lost in Translation' she seemed much less assured.
The film is sometimes described as a comedy, but there is little humour in it, and what there is is often crude. The scene with the call-girl struck me as being particularly tasteless, and I found it difficult to believe that a film supposedly made for adults was trying to get laughs from the way foreigners speak English. (`Lip my stockings'). Ten-year-olds might still crease themselves at the thought that the Chinese eat `flied lice', but I thought we stopped laughing at Orientals who confused `l' and `r' sounds after leaving primary school.
Although I thought that `Return of the King' was a worthy winner of this year's `Best Picture' award, I find it incredible that the Academy rated `Lost in Translation' above such excellent films as `Girl with a Pearl Earring', `Big Fish' or `Cold Mountain'. I found it a slight, inconsequential film, a comedy without humour and a drama without action. I still find myself asking `Is that it?'. 4/10.