The film “Lost in Translation” is really about the difficulties in translation, but not so much in the linguistic sense, as in the human, - translation of others’ feelings ("Lost In Translation (2003)"). The film is not so much the words as the information, the mood and emotions are not concluded just in words. This is perhaps one of the few movies, where the characters’ silence can be comfortable and talk about many things. A slow, as it might seem, dragged action is not the lack of pictures – that's the essence of the whole atmosphere of loneliness – the characters themselves mired in this atmosphere and want to quickly escape, but they find each other and understand the feelings and thoughts without words. They do have a stable state of mutual comfort, kindred spirits, though each in the depth have an understanding that they will be together for three days and each will continue his life. Such pictures, where the characters break up are in abundance, but there is quite a different matter, then played up is not love, but perhaps something much more, an ideal state of mind, when you just feel good being with that person. The drama is that we, the characters, in general, all of us, realize that this state exists only here and now, in this environment, in this time, and no matter how much they wanted it, they will not be able to feel happy to communicate in elsewhere. They parted at once with tears, but with a sense of happiness from such a moment in their life.
The main characters of this film are very similar. They turned out to appear in a foreign country, where everyone speaks a strange language, where everyone wants something from them, but they cannot even understand exactly what it is. However, if we look at their lives, they do not understand even their loved ones, speaking their native language. From the main character Bob, the wife constantly wants something. She calls him obsessively, sending faxes, and even parcels. She wants something to tell him, maybe about her loneliness or about her offense, but through the translation of deep emotion into household living language, the meaning is lost. Charlotte does not understand her husband, his stupid friends, and his work, which gives her the opportunity to live in a luxury hotel, swim in the pool, and watch the panorama of Tokyo. And, of course, it is difficult to explain to others that are not so: she is married, she does not need to work hard. Where to find the right words to say how lonely she is? And so they met. There is a smile, and you do not need to say anything, as everything is clear without words. Nothing is lost in translation, because nothing needs to be translated and everything is clear, when they look at each other, being just together. None of them wants to change their husbands and wives, because it's not about them. The point is the characters themselves. They do not hear the other and do not understand themselves. However, there was someone who understands them, is this not happiness? This is the magic of film, the slowness, subtle humor, and understatement (Suggula).
Everyone thinks that the East is just great because of a different culture, different language, different mentality and customs, which are new and interesting. However, getting used to other people is hard enough, especially if you are alone – in the sense that if there is no one who understands you, as it is in the case with Charlotte. Her husband, a photographer is a man who lives on the machine: work, work and work again. The man used to live in the community, but now people coexist with each other, like ants, which are divided into castes and perform simple functions, not leaving a place for feeling, and when you meet like-minded, everything changes. And alien Japan is becoming a great place that you want to open every day together with a person, whom you know. And the lights of Tokyo will help, lighting the way and inviting to go forward into the unknown. However, the result is already known, it is a dead end that we set ourselves to. And it looks pretty, Japan in the film, when the whole romanticism of Eastern culture is washed off by rain misunderstanding, and we realize how all the same these small islands are distant and foreign to us.
I always thought: Why Tokyo? The answer emerged from my closer examination of the picture. Details – they are what makes any work holistic and like Rubik's Cube suggest us coming to understanding of the director's intention. So, what do we see? He is a star, a little tired of the usual life, serious man, who is married, but his wife has not caused to him any particular emotion for a long time. She is smart, very beautiful and also boring to listen to the friends of her husband, whose conversations are reduced to platitudes such as excess weight. Coppola shows us pretty sophisticated people, whose lives intersect in the background, and then we return to the issue of Tokyo. Japan is the best background, sample of courtesy and beauty. And against this background, there is some fine spiritual connection between lonely people, despite they are bound with marriage and related contracts. Bob and Charlotte are like children running at night Tokyo, singing, drinking, and they feel good together. They attend high-tech Tokyo hospital, temple, TV, karaoke bar. Their relationship is beyond bodily desires. They feel souls. Why do we have millions of empty words and useless dialogue inherent in stupid movies? It only spoils the atmosphere. We do not understand what the Japanese say, but we do not have to. Focus on Bob and Charlotte (Ebert).
The film is not without reason transferred to Japan as it is mysterious and incomprehensible to Europeans and Americans. “Lost in Translation” is a film about loneliness, which we very often have to feel. This feeling arises out of dissatisfaction with our lives, when there is no purpose and meaning, and everything that we do we are doing wrong, and for good reason. In our everyday life, with a bunch of regular everyday problems, small classes and different running around, that feeling is difficult to find. Therefore, Sofia sends her characters to distant Japan, leaving them there alone with their loneliness (Monahan).
Japan is just so incomprehensible and so far, perhaps even more mysterious than that shown in the “Memoirs of a Geisha”. Tokyo is an allegory, this is our life, catchy, bright and essentially alien; a life, in which we are often lost in the endless search of ourselves, looking for kindred spirits, and attempts to find a correct translation. The translation is not a word – it abot translation of others' lives and motivations for ourselves. Why is it so difficult to translate? Because we are “too” alone, we are immersed "in ourselves". Between the protagonists, there was a spark, while in other circumstances, they could pass each other. They were on the same wavelength, but can they really be kindred spirits? Or is it still just a chance meeting? In fact, in this crazy city that is not important.
Sofia Coppola tried to come to terms with the outside world by an alien encounter of two US lonely people in the Asian metropolis. Here, sleepy Bill Murray goes through sleepy Tokyo to meet young Scarlett Johansson in a luxurious hotel. From sheets, torn from insomnia and snoring husband, these two will be run again and again to the hotel bar, where they mixed whiskey in half with life, and tired mind finds although precarious, but the balance. Then, they go to sing karaoke at afterparty and dissect on lifeless hospital corridors in a wheelchair, watching Hollywood classics in Japanese, and just talk about everything ("And Never The Twain Shall Meet").
The film is like one big metaphor for alienation, where loved ones understand sometimes no better than the Japanese in full ignorance of the language, because the meaning of what is said gets invariably lost in a halfway. The thought expressed is a lie; the thought heard is a lie twice. Windows muffle the sounds of the human anthill, but, and being in the same room, people are divided by the windows of their consciousness. The ability to hear the other party is not just the words themselves, but the essence of the word, which helps to find harmony with the surrounding world. Tokyo initially irritates Coppola with its vanity, unfamiliar faces, screaming intonation, but, as the characters take on each other, they take on the entire city. The murky window opens, the picture becomes brighter and the sound clearer. Even the Buddhist temple, which did not let Charlotte in, blossoms with the paper leaves of innermost desires. The main charm of “Lost in Translation” consists in this timid optimism and in the fact that the film, in contrast to other similar, is also about the need for self-determination. Charlotte graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and does not know what to do next, in which direction to look for herself. Bob feels that his life has lost value with the birth of children. Both need advice on where to go. Of course, this advice no one gives, but someone the same wide-awake in Tokyo may just hold the hand (in the context of the film is more accurate to speak of the foot, but it sounds a bit strange), until you ask questions to yourself (Rabin).
This film is also about the people, who caught away from home, and how often they missed his native land, native language and native food. Nostalgia, how much is in this word! Sofia Coppola has created even leisurely, as I thought earlier, a very boring atmosphere in the film, which accurately conveys the state of people, who are away from their homes. Nostalgia is certainly not felt by everyone, as someone is likely to greatly rejoice that he left his homeland, but here the authors of the picture focus their attention on the problem of those, who want warmth of their relatives and friends, someone, who would be close in spirit and speaking in their native language. Therefore, the convergence of the characters like Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray is a logical outcome of human relations in their condition. This is an amazing story of friendship and the creation of their small country in a foreign land, which deserves attention. The film is on the approximation of the soulmates, hopeless and seemingly unnecessary rapprochement, after which – even now, at this very moment – there is an inevitable parting, on convergence in spite of everything and on that fine line that allows you to save every minute of your own life, which is right here and now turns to the past, bright, clean and unbearably sad. This film should be viewed from the perspective of people, who met by chance in a strange city, in a foreign country (in another world, in different reality, where the two of them have no place; the only world where they can be together). The film is about people, who did not resist to the ever-increasing attraction, but in no way eased this way, as many other men and women did it. The film is about the inevitable loneliness and alienation, and it is not even in the distance. The thing, which is so lacking in protagonists, is that they feel alone in this world.
In its manner, this picture may rather remind "the drama of alienation", which is a characteristic for the Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni and his German follower "Wim" Wenders. In the film “Lost in Translation” there is almost nothing but exhausting longing in a strange Japan of the two above-mentioned Americans – a famous actor named Bob Harris, whose career in the homeland began to decline long ago, and Charlotte, the young wife of the photographer John, who is always busy, while she is frankly bored, sitting alone in a hotel room. Bob is forced to carry all the burdens of communicating with stubborn broadcasters in Tokyo for a substantial fee, sometimes without understanding of their long discourses, expressed mainly in Japanese. In addition, he is experiencing an obvious crisis of relations with annoying wife and children, having a duty habit of contacting them by phone. And Charlotte is suffering because of her own unfulfilled as two years of marriage brought her only disappointment and sad realization that she is a graduate philosopher, whom no one needs.
“Lost in Translation” is not just “Lost in translation” in the literal sense. That is one of those moments, when there is a misunderstanding due to inadequate translation from one language to another. After all, the two main characters also suffer because of the time difference between Japan and the United States – they cannot sleep at night, but during the day they fall into a drowsy condition. They feel lost because of time zone offsets, and most importantly they are completely lonely due to the movement in the alien environment, like on another planet. And they are so attracted to each other in the search for a kindred spirit.
Loneliness is the leitmotif of the film here. Feeling hopeless loneliness of the main characters is reinforced when we see Bob invited to a Japanese TV show and wondered how he appeared there, what he was doing, and who, in general, are the people dancing and grimacing at his side. When we see Charlotte in the circle of friends of her husband, who unlikely love, appreciate and understand her, and who see her as a trifle, for some reason dragged by their friends with him. The film is about loneliness, which has no age.
Step by step, through ups and downs, filling cones and earning abrasions on their elbows, human individuals seek happiness, or the most comfortable environment of their habitat. For some, it is important to be in the middle, to be in constant motion, receiving life charge from the scenery around. Others go to their craft with the head, creating a world of their own, and not paying attention to the surrounding fuss. For third people, it is sufficient to find a kindred spirit, capable of understanding without words, and even at a distance. For the sake of understanding, they leave their homes, go to the end of the world, looking for themselves in an alien culture, doubt and do wrong things. Having found it, they gain a second wind, and even if this is a meeting for one week, it is remembered for a lifetime (Mizota & Wang).
Everything is shown very measured and calm; you feel a kind of peace, seeing every shot of this very interesting and original film. Both the form and content of: solidifying frames, slow plot development, the constant innuendo in conversations – everything tunes on thinking and memory. The cast played their games just fine, just feel their loneliness in this, so unpredictable and unfamiliar country, and the desire to brighten it by socializing. The ending is such as in life, everything is not clear, vague, but there is a huge scope for a variety of possibilities and probabilities of further developments. No matter how close the people are – they are still divided by infinity, which is why there is such a scope for interpretation and this is why life is so interesting and complex ("Lost In Translation (2003): “For Relaxing Times, Make It Suntory Time.”").
The film accurately conveys the melancholy mood of the characters, who suffer from insomnia, loneliness of unfree people, poise Japan, unbearable lightness of being, calm and slowness of the plot, and in the final light pleasant notes of nostalgia. There is no place for loud modern music, energetic dancing, and countless conversations. Sofia Coppola considered it necessary to bring the conversation to a whisper, make music invisible, transparent, which does not interfere with the function but just supplements it. Silence, smoked cigarettes, glasses of whiskey, along with reflections on the window sill fit harmoniously into the pensive night state of the characters.
There is a slow story against the backdrop of sadness, anguish of two people – a man and a woman. They are united by one thing – a shame for undone, unspoken, not heard, search for mutual understanding spouse and the people around them. Hotel room is a world of one person and has a global world. We all pretend that we have a lot of friends, businesses, the problems; run around in confusion, standing in grueling traffic, and rejoice in the new car promotion. But this is an illusion of happiness. The residents of the metropolis can not be single people, no matter whether they have a family with lots of children. Hectic world is based on the scheme work – home, and between them there is just a rush, running, and they are themselves just part of the process, the mechanism, which they should stop and think – there is a void, nothing else.
To sum up the work done by Sofia Coppola’s team, we can say the following – a great direction, thoroughly and deeply thought-out script, gorgeous cinematography, perfectly matched music, stunning and amazing acting of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson together give us a remarkable story of two soul mates who have lost their meaning and balance in their lives, who have found each other in a strange and alienated to their country, with its distinctive culture and language. Despite the melancholy mood of the picture and a little sad ending, this film still leaves a pleasant aftertaste (Haslem).
Works cited
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Ebert, Roger. "Lost In Translation Movie Review (2003) | Roger Ebert". Rogerebert.com. N.p., 2010. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Haslem, Wendy. "Neon Gothic: Lost In Translation". Senses of Cinema. N.p., 2004. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
"Lost In Translation (2003)". IMDb. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
"Lost In Translation (2003)". Cut The Crap Movie Reviews. N.p., 2010. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
"Lost In Translation (2003): “For Relaxing Times, Make It Suntory Time.”". FILM GRIMOIRE. N.p., 2015. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Mizota, Sharon and Oliver Wang. "Lost In Translation (2003)". PopMatters. N.p., 2004. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Monahan, Mark. "Must-Have Movies: Lost In Translation (2003)".Telegraph.co.uk. N.p., 2006. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Rabin, Nathan. "Lost In Translation". Avclub.com. N.p., 2003. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Suggula, Akshay. "Review: Lost In Translation (United States, 2003)". Cinema Escapist. N.p., 2014. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
