Superb Exploration of Being out of your Element

Rating: 10/10 (28 September 2003)

This movie is set in Japan, but it might as well have been set in Singapore, or Tehran, or Istanbul. It is not, as some perversely want to believe, a slam against the Japanese. Instead, it is a look at what it means to be traveling outside one's element and, due to the enforced lack of normal distractions, having the time and opportunity to think about life and develop relationships that are unique to that time and place.
If you have traveled alone in countries that have a different language and customs, you can appreciate the utter aloneness you feel despite being surrounded by witty, intelligent people with whom you really cannot communicate in normal (for you) ways (I think the shots of Johansson walking through Tokyo alone and seeing the cultural differences up close and personal establishes this concept nicely).
The "locals" are just as good and bad and interesting and farcical as people anywhere else, the crucial factor being that they have their ways and they are not your ways. Whereas at home or traveling within your own country there are countless recognizable reference points that keep you tethered to the mooring at which you anchor your life, when you are completely and utterly on the outside looking in, funny things happen - you start getting introspective, you notice peculiarities about your own home environment (where carpet is the most pressing issue), and you develop relationships based on sheer serendipity. In other words, you open yourself up to new experiences that you would never permit in your ordered and mannered life at home.
This is a movie about that experience. Two strangers meet, both out of their element, each coming to grips with problems in their lives because they are forced to confront them in the solitude of this alien environment. There are others around to talk to, for example an inane (Britney Spears type) starlet and lounge singers, but for individual reasons they are immune to the influences the main characters feel and thus inappropriate companions for them - the starlet because she is too unclever, the lounge singer because she has become her insipid act. So the two travelers meet and share a defining experience outside the confines of their "real" lives because they are both there and going through the same type of experience.
Bill Murray gives an outstanding performance, understated but classic in its very ordinariness. The shot of his isolation as he hits a golf ball at dawn and then follows it down the fairway alone captures his situation perfectly. Pestered by a wife who patronizes him and agents with no time for him, he seeks out the lovely Scarlett Johansson (or rather, she seeks out him). They have a few laughs, part forever most likely (that is wisely left uncertain) - and, in between, taste a life they might still have if only their pasts did not determine their futures.
The film pokes gentle fun at some peculiarities of Japanese culture, but Bill Murray films tend to poke fun at whatever is in his general vicinity - the Army in "Stripes," politicians in "Ghostbusters," psychiatrists in "What About Bob." If you think this is film is some kind of ethnic slam, you are completely missing the point of the proceedings. The point is that by being in a completely unfamiliar environment, you notice the oddities present in all cultures that surround us and them and everyone that otherwise, being part of our normal background, we just take for granted. The characters' heightened perceptions is the point, not the fact that some aspects of Asian culture come in for comic observations.
If you just have to think the worst about this film as being some kind of ethnocentric xenophobic hit piece, go get your revenge by renting Jim Jarmusch's "Mystery Train" which completely reverses the paradigm and has Asians confronting the silliest and strangest aspects of Americana. If you find that "Mystery Train" is not a slam against the US (and it manifestly is not), perhaps you will be able to see that this film similarly is not intended that way against Japan.
Please do not bother viewing this film if you want car chases and action sequences and "10,000 jokes." It is a subtle film for those with patience and those looking for a little insight into the human condition. If you are looking for some intricate plot with clever twists and lots of gadgets, this is not the film for you. Expect a little, though, and you will get a whole lot.
I give this film my highest rating, not because it has an outstanding plot or tremendous action or a high concept, but because it successfully captures a common experience - traveling alone in an alien environment - and treats it honestly with outstanding performance and an intimate gaze. Bill Murray deserves recognition for this film, and I hope he gets it.