LOST IN TRANSLATION (FILM)

'''Lost in Translation''' is a 2003 comedy drama film. It was the second feature film written and directed by Sofia Coppola, after ''The Virgin Suicides''. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Bill Murray, and Best Director for Sofia Coppola. Coppola won Best Original Screenplay.
The film centers on Bob Harris (Murray), an American action movie star on the downward slope of his career, who has come to Tokyo, Japan to film a Suntory whisky commercial. He meets Charlotte (Johansson), a recent Yale philosophy graduate who is married to a self-centered celebrity photographer, played by Giovanni Ribisi, and as yet unfocussed in terms of her future. The two share an unconsummated romance while briefly exploring the cultural life of Tokyo but primarily feeling alienated and uncertain about the direction of their lives.
Superficially, ''Lost in Translation'' is a movie about culture shock, but the experience of Westerners in Tokyo is a metaphor for more existential themes of alienation, loneliness, and the desire for companionship. The film explores these themes against the background of the modern Japanese cityscape. The film is rated R in the United States, 15 in the United Kingdom, PG in Australia and PG in Canada.

Contents

Synopsis

Lost In Translation

Reaction

Awards

Cast

Autobiographical elements

DVD special features

Trivia

Notes

External links

Synopsis

Aging movie star Bob Harris (Bill Murray) has arrived in Tokyo to film a Suntory whisky advert (a reference to real-life Hollywood actors who do foreign celebrity advertising, including Sofia Coppola's father, Francis Ford Coppola, who did Suntory commercials with Akira Kurosawa during the filming of ''Kagemusha''^[1]).
Charlotte (played by Scarlett Johansson) is the young wife of a celebrity photographer on assignment in Tokyo. Left behind by her husband when he goes to his photo shoots, she wonders about her future and about the man she has married. Bob's relationship with his wife of over 20 years is clearly tired and lacking in romance, as revealed in his telephone calls back to the States. Bob and Charlotte, both lonely and directionless, meet in the bar of the hotel where they are staying and strike up a friendship. The two explore Tokyo together, meeting Charlotte's local friends and experiencing the differences between Japanese and American culture (which they find daunting). The two grow close through their adventures and the time they spend together when neither can sleep. They are clearly attracted to one another, but their marriages and ages prevent a sexual involvement, resulting in significant but subtly-handled erotic tension.
On the penultimate night of his stay, Bob attracts the attention of a performing vocalist in the hotel bar. The next morning, Bob awakens to find this woman in his room and Charlotte waiting for him. The pair have a brief falling-out when they later meet at a restaurant, seemingly over Bob's sleeping with this other woman. Later that night, during a fire alarm, they reconcile and express how they will miss each other.
On the morning of his departure, as Bob is in his taxi to the airport, he sees Charlotte on a crowded street. He asks his driver to stop, gets out, and pursues Charlotte. When he reaches her, the two face each other for a long moment and then embrace. Bob whispers in the tearful Charlotte's ear (something that was unscripted and that the actors and Sofia Coppola have declined to repeat in interviews). After a kiss (also, apparently, unscripted), Bob and Charlotte part. The movie ends, with the future of their relationship left ambiguous.

Lost In Translation

A scene in the film illustrates being "''Lost in Translation''" quite literally. Bob, a Japanese director (Yutaka Tadokoro), and an interpreter (Takeshita) are on a set, filming the whisky commercial. The audience witnesses several exchanges in which the director speaks several sentences, with passion, followed by a brief, pithy translation. At one point, a puzzled and exasperated Bob asks "Is that everything? It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that." The scene is played without subtitles, so that viewers who do not speak Japanese feel quite as lost as Bob does. Motoko Rich of ''The New York Times'' translated the scene in a 2003 article.^[2] One of the exchanges translated by Rich illustrates the scene in general:
::'Bob': Does he want me to, to turn from the right or turn from the left?
::'Interpreter' (in formal Japanese, to the director): He has prepared and is ready. And he wants to know, when the camera rolls, would you prefer that he turn to the left, or would you prefer that he turn to the right? And that is the kind of thing he would like to know, if you don't mind.
::'Director' (very brusquely, in colloquial Japanese): Either way is fine. That kind of thing doesn't matter. We don't have time, Bob-san, O.K.? You need to hurry. Raise the tension. Look at the camera. Slowly, with passion. It's passion that we want. Do you understand?
::'Interpreter' (In English, to Bob): Right side. And, uh, with intensity.''

Reaction

Boosted by critical acclaim and audience word-of-mouth, this modest feature film (with only a $4 million budget) became a comparative box office hit, returning over $45M in receipts from the U.S. alone. ''Lost in Translation'' has been praised not only for Coppola's script and distinctive directing, but also for the work of Murray, who by many accounts gave the performance of his career.^[3] Johansson also received notice for her strong performance. Overall, Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, describing it as "sweet and sad at the same time as it is sardonic and funny."
On the other hand, some reviewers criticized the film's purposely vague ending, in which Coppola skirted the concept of denouement and left the conclusion entirely up to the opinions of viewers. For example, Noel Megahey of DVD Times considered this device a "cheat" on the audience and argued that the film was "equally as endearing as frustrating for viewers".^[4]
One of the most negative reviews came from Kiku Day - a reviewer for ''The Guardian'' - who strongly criticized the movie for what she claimed was "anti-Japanese racism". The reviewer cited the film as an example of how Hollywood was, as she saw it, "the handmaiden to perpetuating the belief of the superiority of US cultural values over all others" and characterized director Coppola as "the thinking person's Sylvester Stallone".^[5]

Awards

Academy Awards record
'1. Best Original Screenplay', Sofia Coppola
Golden Globe Awards record
'1. Best Picture - Musical/Comedy'
'2. Best Actor - Musical/Comedy', Bill Murray
'3. Best Screenplay', Sofia Coppola
BAFTA Awards record
'1. Best Editing', Sarah Flack
'2. Best Actor', Bill Murray
'3. Best Actress', Scarlett Johansson

★ The film won an Oscar for best original screenplay. It was also nominated for best director (the first time an American woman was nominated for this award), picture and actor.

★ The film won Golden Globes for best musical or comedy motion picture, screenplay, and musical or comedy actor. It was also nominated for best director, and musical or comedy actress.

★ At the BAFTA film awards, the film won the best editing, actor and actress awards. It was also nominated for best film, director, original screenplay, music and cinematography.

★ It won four IFP Independent Spirit Awards, for best feature, director, male lead, and screenplay.

Cast

★ Bill Murray as Bob Harris

★ Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte

★ Giovanni Ribisi as John, Charlotte's husband

★ Anna Faris as Kelly

★ Fumihiro Hayashi as Charlie

★ Akiko Takeshita as Ms. Kawasaki

★ Kazuyoshi Minamimagoe as Press agent

★ Kazuko Shibata as Press agent

★ Take as Press agent

★ Ryuichiro Baba as Concierge

★ Takashi Fujii as TV host (as Matthew Minami)

Autobiographical elements

Much has been made of the parallels between the characters in the film and those in Coppola's own social circles. Ribisi's character has similar speech mannerisms and gestures to Coppola's then-husband, director Spike Jonze, who began his career as a photographer. In addition, the main character of Charlotte wears clothes by designer Marc Jacobs, Coppola's close friend and a designer for whom Coppola has appeared in ads. Coppola specifically denied that the film was meant to be a portrait of her marriage in an ''Entertainment Weekly'' interview. Coppola and Jonze separated soon after the film was released.

DVD special features

''Lost on Location: Behind the Scenes of "Lost in Translation"'' is a 30-minute featurette included on the DVD. It features Sofia Coppola, Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, and others. During filming, most of the cast and crew stayed at Oakwood Residence Aoyama, a serviced apartment in Tokyo. During one day of filming, a typhoon hit Tokyo and producer Ross Katz was heard urging everyone to go back to Oakwood.

Trivia

★ Robert Frost famously defined poetry as "what gets lost in translation".^[6]

★ The bar featured throughout the film is the New York Bar, situated on the 52nd floor of the Park Hyatt Tokyo hotel in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo. The bar features two movie-inspired beverages – the L.I.T (Lost in Translation) and the Sofia – in addition to an open kitchen and floor-to-ceiling windows.

★ The film was the first movie shown on the UK television channel Film4 after becoming non-subscription.

★ The movie Charlotte and Bob are watching on TV near the end of the film is Federico Fellini's ''La dolce vita''.

★ Charlotte's Japanese friend is named "Charlie Brown". A character named Charlie Brown was featured in another 2003 movie made by an American director and shot in Japan: Quentin Tarantino's ''Kill Bill''. Tarantino and Sofia Coppola were romantically linked briefly in 2004.

★ The shrine that Charlotte visits while in Kyoto is the Heian Jingu. She is also seen walking up the steps of the giant San-mon gate at Nanzen-ji.

★ The stuffed toy owl Bob Harris gives to Charlotte in the hospital is a Mon Seuil toy that goes by the name Ruizu (Louise).

★ In 2004 a ''Sydney Morning Herald'' column ran a competition to speculate on what Bill Murray's character whispers to Charlotte. The nominees included "Of all the bars in all the world, you had to walk in to mine. But we'll always have Tokyo" and "I suppose a fuck is out of the question?". The winning suggestion referenced another famous Scarlett: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn".^[7]

★ In the latter parts of the film, Bob Harris is asked to play a guest in a real chat show called ''Matthew's Best Hit TV''.

★ Bob's chauffeur car throughout the film is a Toyota Century, a full-size luxury car that is commonly used in Japan as a form of VIP transportation and by Japanese embassy officials for other countries.

★ For years, no one other than Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson and Sofia Coppola knew what Bob whispered to Charlotte in the final scene, but according to BBC2's The Culture Show in October 2006, where special sound equipment was used to make the conversation audible, Bob most likely said: "I love you. Don't forget to always tell the truth."^[8]

Notes

1. 1980s Suntory Whisky Advertisements.
2. New York Times 9-21-2003
3. Roger Ebert: "These are two wonderful performances. Bill Murray has never been better."
4. DVDTimes review
5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1130137,00.html
6. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/robertfros101675.html
7. Sydney Morning Herald 6 Feb 2004
8. IMDB Trivia

External links

★ Official site

★

★ Review by Roger Ebert

★ ''Guardian'' article on the film's perceived racism

★ Draft Script (9/2/2002 draft)