Movie Reviews for Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation

	List Price: $14.98 Our Price: $1.90 You Save: $13.08 (87%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases

Movie Reviews of Lost in Translation

Movie Review: funny, smart, widdy, and spectacular
Summary: 5 Stars

Now, revealing these innermost thoughts is extremely difficult to do in a movie. At best, viewers are given small vignettes by a character's crying, their apathetic attitude, or, in rare instances, through dialogue where a character articulates their feelings in spoken word. "Lost in Translation" reveals the internal dilemma of the two main characters, who are both experiencing the feeling of being lost, by creating an analogy. The analogy is being in a foreign country, where the language, customs, mannerisms, and culture are vastly different from that which is familiar to you; for example, two Americans in modern-day Japan. A foreigner in such a position often does not understand where they are going, feel grossly out of place, and cannot take advantage of simple daily amusements. Stuck in such a situation, one might be tempted to simply stay in their hotel room, or lose themselves at the bar night after night. While not a perfect analogy, it is a visually intense way at revealing, albeit imperfectly, the feeling of an individual struggling with their place in the world.

"Lost in Translation" avoids any deep philosophical analysis of this problem. It does not give an answer to the character's questions. It does not provide any hidden meaning of life. It does not attempt to make sense out of the confusion of life that can consume us and rightfully so. For those that struggle with the question of purpose, an answer is rarely presented. Some may have an epiphany, finding themselves in a moment of clarity. Others are not so lucky. The question of purpose is fundamental, and, as revealed by the characters in this film, is often a life long inquiry facing us at the beginning of life (Charlotte) or in the middle of well-traveled life (Bob).

What hope the film does provide is that we may find someone in life with whom we can share our experiences. This, in reality, is usually the best hope of all. We may never come to grasp with our struggle to find a place in the world. But by struggling together, it makes life bearable, and even, enjoyable. This is the relationship between Bob and Charlotte. It is not sexual. And it is not simply friendly. It is a deep connection a bond that allows them to overcome their melancholy, venturing through life together. Just as it is a far better experience for a foreigner to visit a foreign country with a friend. It is not that the two individuals combined have any better sense of direction or feel any less out of place. But they share the experience of being lost together relating and empathizing with each other, and depending on each other for support. A bond between two such lost souls is often more powerful than the disposable sexual relationships that permeate our culture today.

"Lost in Translation" does not attempt to answer the questions faced by the characters. It simply shows them, as best as can be done through cinema. The film may frustrate the audience, being that it is slow and meandering at times, ambiguous, and unresolved. This reveals the brilliance of its direction. The audience will feel what the characters themselves feel. This is the entire intention of the film. It highlights the frustration and disappointment that some feel in this world. It shows that even though there may be someone in this world with whom we could connect - sometimes that connection is not possible.

Cinematically, this film is superb. Which is also very very funny. If you understand the purpose of the film, every aspect of direction contributes to the overall experience of sharing and understanding the sadness and confusion of the characters which is exactly what the two characters are doing for each other, sharing and understanding! Bill Murray does a fantastic portrayal of Bob. Only someone with his comedic skill could portray the sarcastic and subtle comedy of Bob's character. Scarlett Johansson is absolutely brilliant. She portrays the young, well-educated, but lost Charlotte without coming across as idealistic or portentous or philosophical-for-philosophy's sake. Her character is absolutely genuine, struggling with life even though she ostensibly has all those "traditional" indicia of happiness and success: a hansom husband, money, connection to fame, opportunities for world travel, and an Ivy League education. Bill Murry deserved the Oscar for this film though, he is hilarious. A must see film for everyone.

Movie Review: Why you love or hate this movie
Summary: 5 Stars

Why?

1) Well, the grouches are quite right--it's not much of a comedy, there's very little story, and the characters aren't going through giant transformations across the course of the film. If you're sitting at home with your significant other or a bunch of friends, if you're talking, if the sound of crunching snacks in your head is louder than the soundtrack, if the lights are on or the phone rings, forget it, you're done--it's like visiting a zen rock garden with a GameBoy, and your only shot at liking this film is personally relating to what the characters have experienced, or if you've been to Tokyo.

2) The rabid fans are quite right too--LIT is an "experience" film that is mismarketed as a Bill Murray comedy; it's all about sights and sounds, not story. It lets you know this from the very first shot, a long, wordless look at, um, Scarlett Johansson, with a quietly rising and subsiding sound clip from Kevin Shields, the songwriter of the greatest lost band of last twenty years, My Bloody Valentine (if you don't know, YOU BETTER ASK SOMEBODY). There's every chance this bombs at home, but in a theater, in the dark, with great sound and everybody shutting up, it works.

That first shot sets the tone for LIT. There's not a single jump cut or sudden burst of sound in the entire film--it's supposed to be a slow, alluring, engulfing experience; again, this is terrific in a theater, but it's a fragile spell, and it's easy to see why it might not work at home.

3) The grouches are also right when they criticize the dialogue. In literal terms, not a lot is being said. If you don't attach to the characters at all, it isn't hard to start hating a young, pretty, apathetic whiner and a rich middle-aged whiner, both given the luxury of fretting full-time over existential problems, which, if you don't like the leads, seem pretty trivial. It's not hard to see why that doesn't make for a fun movie night.

4) The rabid fans can argue this one--LIT is very much about what's NOT said.

Think about the most verbal characters in the film: they're babbling. The sweetly inattentive husband is wildly inarticulate--he's perpetually distracted, and constantly interrupting his own train of thought. The starlet (a snarky sendup of Cameron Diaz) grows more vapid by the sentence. Bill Murray's wife is nothing but a telephone voice, transfixed by carpet swatches and bored by everything else. And from the dead-serious commercial director to the ebulliently idiotic talk show host, there's no clear translation of the spoken Japanese. For God's sake, when she over-emotes her way through Scarborough Fair, the lounge singer is a self-parody, unintentionally echoing Bill Murray's famous SNL parody of a lounge singer pouring out Scarborough Fair. Every one of them is lost in translation.

In a different way, so are Bob and Charlotte. The reason LIT doesn't have a story is that the entire film is an interlude--two people who suddenly find themselves together, sharing a break from their lives.

And they both seem to really need it--they're sick of the meaningless conversations and logistics that drive their worlds. It's a classic use of the medium, to show the huge gap between what's said and what's seen. Bob and Charlotte are wonderfully quiet and accepting of each other from the get go--they don't have talk much to connect. If you watch for it, there's a silent shift in the film: before she meets Bob, Charlotte is rattled by how numb she feels when she visits a temple and retreats to her hotel room, surrounding herself with junk media. Before Bob meets Charlotte, he sleepwalks through his workday, producing junk media. After they meet, when they spend time on their own, they wander wordlessly and beautifully alone: Bob golfs by himself with Mt. Fuji in the distance, and Mt. Fuji floats by Charlotte on a Kyoto bullet train, as she heads off to visit another temple. They're discovering a less bewildering, more personal Japan, and retrieving themselves as they do it. And all this is shown, not spoken.

5) The grouches have a point: nothing freaking happens in LIT.

6) The fans answer: yeah, exactly. The key to the film is what doesn't happen between the characters. It's no accident that LIT takes place in bustling, frenetic Tokyo, or that the main characters are hopelessly jetlagged and out of sync with everything except each other. If that doesn't sink in early, then you'll miss the many charms of LIT, from the long, lovely shots, the sweet, spare exchanges between Bob and Charlotte, the gorgeously slow shoegazer/trip-hop/dream pop soundtrack (the best since Trainspotting, High Art,and Ms. Coppola's last film, the Virgin Suicides), and the electrifyingly silent ending.

So, sorry if you hated this film. Have a drink, maybe two, turn the off lights, don't talk, watch it again, and you might change your mind.

(Oh, and if you take into account EVERY image of Japanese people in this film--the businesspmen and women, the artists, the florists, the crowds in the street, the surfers, the strippers, the monks, the bride and groom, the elderly patient, the doctor, etc.--it's harder to argue that LIT is an anti-Japanese film, and easier to see it for what it is: an outsider's POV of a few silly and sublime experiences in an unfamiliar culture).

Movie Review: Please Let Me Apologize Again
Summary: 5 Stars

that one star review of Gangs Of New York, but it would not let
me erase the review and I tried to work out the problem for hours but nothing happened. I forgot about it for months, but at
the time I was feeling sad for a few days that I insulted a
decade I truly I mean truly loved which is the wonderful and
beautiful 21st century. However during July 2003, I could not
remember If I wrote an apology review for it still did not warn
my friends of the dangers, but I was feeling better for I was
watching my favorite films, music, and HBO TV from my all time
favorite decade the 21st century. From than on I felt great,
Than on March 28th 2004, I decides to write what I truly truly
thought of Gangs Of New York and my all time favorite decade the
21st century. I wrote down with enthusiasm and honesty that I
not only truly truly love Gangs Of New York, but that I also
truly truly loved my all time favorite decade the 21st century.
Make no mistake I have always loved my all time favorite decade
the 21st century, from the start to present day. I also love
living in my all time favorite decade the 21st century, where
people are nice, and their is truly truly awesome technology
like the internet, DVD players, and Playstation 2. The 1980's
was a horrible, pointless, and stupid decade for it also has
none of the stuff the awesome 21st century had. My all time
favorite decade is the 21st century which is also the one I am
growing up in. I love the 21st century for people are nice, we
have the internet, DVD players, and Playstation 2. I love my
all time favorite decade which is the 21st century, in face I
own the great movies from the 21st century. I own all the DVD's
of the great movies from the 21st century. That is everything
from Erin Brockovich to Lord Of The Rings Return Of The King.
I am telling you the honest honest truth. I love the 21st century, it is my all time favorite decade. I am proud to live
in the 21st century, we get the internet, DVD players, and
Playstation 2. Plus HBO TV is great my favorite ones are The
Sopranos, Oz, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and of course Deadwood. I also love the HBO miniseries Band Of Brothers
and Angels In America. Plus people are really nice in my all time favorite decade the 21st century. I am truly being honest
with everything I just said in my review, which is the same thing I did with my March 28th 2004 review of Gangs Of New York.
I am also being honest I mean truly honest I love I mean really
really love the beautiful and wonderful 21st century, which is
my all time favorite decade of all time. All in all the 21st
century is awesome. Long live the 21st century.

Reviewed By
John Charet
A.K.A. Cool Dude

Movie Review: Thank God for Movies Like This
Summary: 5 Stars

Although "Lost in Translation" stars Bill Murray, it's not one of his mainstream comedies but an - often humorous - offbeat love story, or friendship story, or lost soul story. It's the fact that you end up not quite sure which that is a major part of its charm.

Sofia Coppola's script is fairly minimalist, leaving plenty of room for Bill Murray and Scarlett Johanssen to develop their characters' relationships through looks, gestures, moments of silence. And then there are the added complications. Murray's character Bob Harris is facing a mid-life crisis. Johanssen's Charlotte is in her early to mid-twenties. Both are married.

Bob is a slightly over the hill actor who - he tells Charlotte - could be at home doing a play but is in Tokyo to do an ad for whisky for 2 million dollars. Charlotte is the wife of a fashion photographer (played by Giovanni Ribisi) who's in town to do a shoot. Charlotte's been married two years, and is beginning to think she doesn't really know who her husband is. Bob has been married for 25 years and it's a marriage that seems to exist for the sake of the children. During their cross world phone calls neither he nor his wife seem to be very open with one another emotionally.

Both characters are jet-lagged and suffering from insomnia. In the early hours of the morning they find themselves sitting next to one another in the hotel bar, and they begin to get to know one another, something that probably would not have happened had they not been adrift, strangers in a strange land.

And to them at least Tokyo is a strange land. Charlotte feels the alienation of the outsider. Bob's cultural collisions are somewhat more amusing. Some, most notably a session shooting photographs for the whiskey campaign, are ad-libbed by Murray and the Japanese cast. In another scene a Japanese prostitute sent to his room by his gracious hosts won't take no for an answer, and seems determined that he should lick her tights or lip her tights. It takes him a while to catch on.

Film-makers sometimes don't do so well when they are visiting another culture. Even a mostly observant director like Wim Wenders can find him or herself coming over as a cultural tourist, as Wenders did in "Tokyo-Ga".

Coppola and cameraman Lance Acord take us through a similar landscape, of pachinko parlours, video game arcades, and karaoke bars, but they're less overwhelmed with the environment and a bit more willing to draw satire from it. A Japanese character nicknamed Charlie Brown singing the Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen" in a karaoke bar, does - after all - have potentially humorous overtones.

And those who complain about perceived "racism" fail to notice that the film's not any less satirical in its portrayal of many of the Western characters, including a Western lady jazz singer in the hotel bar, a Hollywood actress in Japan to promote an action movie in which she co-starred with Keanu Reeves, or even Bob himself. One encounter between Bob and the jazz singer, and its after-effects, are simultaneously stinging, funny and poignant.

Bob stays in Tokyo a few extra days to appear on an absurd TV chat show. Charlotte is left alone as her husband leaves town for a shoot. They begin to hang out together. They begin to realise that despite the age difference, and their different places in life they are experiencing very similar self-doubts. And they like each other. A lot. But where are they going to go with it? I'm not going to give much of that away, but it's an extremely sensitive portrayal of a budding relationship between what is - in some ways only - an odd couple.

Sofia Coppola's casting is inspired. The origin of the film was the city of Tokyo itself, which Coppola felt she wanted to put on screen, But once she'd decided that she began to look for characters and - from the beginning - had Murray in mind. In "Lost in Translation" Murray gives free rein to both his comic ability and his sensitivity.

Cast opposite him, Scarlet Johansen is about five years younger than the character she's playing. She's not yet even twenty, but she is already more than able to suggest a level of complexity far beyond her years.

Much the same statement also applies to director and screenwriter Sofia Coppola. Some have been sceptical about how someone so young could get into the head of a middle aged guy having a mid-life crisis. It doesn't surprise me so much. Coppola clearly possesses the art, insight and sensitivity to do it. And the only criticism I have about "Lost in Translation" is that it's all over way too fast.

Movie Review: follow her down to worship some god...
Summary: 5 Stars

The framework for the movie is a strangely withdrawn "love" story between middle-aged and crestallen actor Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and 20-some year old Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson back to the Ghost World tradition of playing characters older than herself). Bob is in Tokyo for a commercial campaign, a rut compared to his previous fame, and goes thru a typical mid-life crisis (though, as with most, not completely unwarranted) and is weighed down by a life that seems to be unsatisfying in which he's no more than prop for others. Likewise, Charlotte is in a just-starting life crisis... she travels to Tokyo with her husband John, a photographer, to whom she's been married for 2 years... no longer with the excitement of newlyweds, but not developed enough to have any real security either... They're both lost, existentially and physically, in a country where they don't understand the language and are puzzled by the customs (and yes, the cast and crew play that for everything its worth... deal with it) and disconnected from and disenchanted with what they've, until that point, imagined their lives to be. In absence of anyone else, they meet and quickly develop a friendship with an understated understanding that's the basis of every great forlorn love story, but, neither of which being willing or able to give up their lives, doesn't turn into blantantly romantic until the very end with a goodbye hug/kiss/cry/whatehaveyou. However, the movie hints (yes, hints) at this throughout with subtle glances, subtle gestures, and Charlotte's half-sarcastic/half-sincere suggestion that they run away together and start a jazz band (possibly the funniest/saddest part in the movie... but you have to see it in context to understand).

So that's it... two people who feel disconnected from everything else find comfort in each other. But, as with any great novel (and whatever literature snobs may say, movies have long replaced novels, so the comparison isn't unwarranted), the plot is the least important part of a story. This movie is truly beautiful in every way... it's orchestrated and completely artificial, like a ballet, and has much of the same emotional effect. The movie is slow and often has long periods of what seems like nothing. However, everything in the film is symbolic of the characters... of their lives, of their feelings for each other... nothing is directly stated, everything is suggested, bringing back brilliant use of allegory that defined pre-code films (or for you literature snobs, the Symbolist movement) in a very modern way. The movie is filled with collages of light and sound... neon scenery blurs in the fast moving glare of a car window, seas of umbrellas obscure crowded gray streets, unrelated sounds and music gradually blend into one unintelligable wall of white noise... and the characters quietly and anonymously (to everyone except the audience) exist within it all. The camera lightly shakes in rhythm with with certain songs... ordinary things take on odd (processed) colors and seem strangely beautiful... One particular scene which moved me was when Charlotte was in a park, tying a white ribbon onto some sort of tree, and glanced over to see a marriage ceremony (? I've only seen the movie once, but I think that's what is was) in which the procession walks in perfect time with the music (and the camera lightly shakes with the rhythm, too)... thru her eyes and expression and the sounds and colors (as well as the knowledge of the present state of her own marriage), such a simple thing takes on mythological proportions with absolute urgency.

Another fascinating scene that is a perfect example of this atmospheric, ethereal, and almost musical approach to filmmaking is a scene where Bob, Charlotte, and some of her friends are singing karaoke. Bob is singing along in a drunken and almost unnervingly languid voice to the Roxy Music song "More Than This", as the camera jolts the scene in the opposite of languid, rushing around frantically from person to person, turning the scene into an indistiguishable blur of color and sound (background noises slowly overshadow the music), giving everything a dreamlike quality of imperminence.

So that's Lost In Translation (I know, I rambled a lot, sorry... but you kind of have to to describe it)... ethereal, atmospheric, artificial, and beautiful... The plot is irrelevant, but the characters are more believable and beautiful than real people could ever be. Oh, and the music is great (Roxy Music, My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and Mary Chain, etc...). Watch it. If you don't love it, you smell!