Lost in Translation, a film written & directed by Sofia Coppola. 2003.
Spoilers
This is a movie I would have liked to watch 16 years ago when it first came out, if only to see the beauty of each frame on the big screen. But I would’ve been 8, and I know for a fact I wouldn’t have gotten as much out of it as I did now, watching it as a twenty-something.
Lost in Translation is the sort of movie that means something slightly different to everyone who watches it. You can watch this and think it’s about love, or about travel, or about Japan. You can watch this and think it’s about a midlife crisis, or about ennui, or about finding yourself. You can watch this and think it’s about commercialism.
And maybe it’s about all of those things all at once. That’s part of the beauty of it.
Director Sofia Coppola weaves together all these different angles to create a film that’s about anything the viewer needs it to be.
I worried it would be a love story. And I’m sure it is to a lot of people. But I like to think of it as a story about those rare connections between souls that vibe at the same frequency and understand each other at a different level than anyone or anything else.
And maybe that is what love is, but then we enter a territory of the ancient greek’s definition of love, or even the split attraction model, both of which I adore and neither of which our modern world seems to subscribe to. These days, society wants to equate love to romance, to sex, to first dates and marriage and kids and till-death-do-us-part.
If this movie is a love story, it’s not that.
Not to me, at least.
But ignoring the rabbit-hole-inviting analysis of what love is, this movie captures two lost souls with a nuance most films don’t begin to touch. Scarlett Johansson‘s Charlotte and Bill Murray’s Bob inhabit a world entirely their own. And for a brief hour and 45 minutes, they let us in, too.
It’s hard navigating the world you’re supposed to be living in when you operate on a different plane. It’s hard to even want to.
Charlotte, grappling with where and who she’s supposed to be, is the most impressive and relatable part of the movie to me. (I mean, how could I not relate to the just-graduated twenty-something wrestling with finding some ounce of meaning in her life? That’s literally where I’ve been the past year and a half.)
There isn’t a scene in this movie that doesn’t check the “emotionally-revealing” box. But to me, Charlotte’s are the most interesting. Probably the saddest moment in the entire film is when she’s trying to reach out to her friend over the phone, trying to connect with another human being who maybe, just maybe, understands the feelings she’s afraid to admit to herself, and her friend completely cuts her off.
Charlotte realizes she’s alone. She realizes the journey to finding herself is a personal one. She realizes she may never walk the same path as her friends and her husband. And she realizes she might not even want to.
She confesses it all quickly on the phone, amidst smothered sobs. And if watching her wipe away those truth-spawned tears so her friend doesn’t know how unhappy she’s been isn’t the most moving scene in the entire movie, I don’t know what is.
“I’m stuck. Does it get easier?” “No.”
But that’s not to downplay Bob’s emotional journey, either. He’s certainly going through some stuff. But his future is cloudy while Charlotte’s is unlimited potential, and I enjoy the hope that hers still offers.
And if I’m honest, I’m just not that fond of some of Bob’s actions. I don’t think the film needed his jokes at Japan’s expense. I think the two of them at odds with the city would be just as clearly defined without his degradations.
And while I’m glad Bob didn’t make anything sexual with someone so young, I’m not the fondest of the kiss at the end. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the hug. I just don’t see the need to make such an intelligent and deeply philosophical and personal connection physical.
It’s also slightly discomforting when their ages are taken into account. I know Charlotte is a twenty-something graduate. But Johansson? She filmed this when she was 17. That’s a huge age gap between the two leads.
Which points to a much larger issue within Hollywood itself, but we don’t have time to dissect that here.
Speaking of Hollywood, though, I’m also not too fond of the opening scene. The sheer underwear reminds me too much of movies written by men for men featuring the male gaze ad nauseam. Even Johansson didn’t want to wear it at first, saying: “I really didn’t want to do the sheer underwear.“
But Coppola is a female director, and she had a creative vision, so if any film was going to open up with a woman’s butt in sheer underwear, at least it was one like this.
That’s a lot of negatives about a movie I genuinely enjoyed. So let’s talk more about what I loved: mainly, the cinematography. It’s nothing short of beautiful.
I mean, look at this frame:
Does that not capture just about every mood you’ve ever felt at 4 am in the midst of an existential crisis about the world and your place in it?
Part of it is Johansson, who, even at 17, manages to capture and portray a depth and weight to her character I’m not sure was even originally written in the script.
But part of it is also Coppola, who treats the film’s many silences as negative space, meant to emphasize the thoughts and emotions of each character. Lost in Translation is just as much about what isn’t said as what is.
The ending only emphasizes that. Charlotte and Bob let us into their world for a bit, but it’s still theirs. Those whispered words separate us, remind us that we’re all just a little bit lost at times.
And Lost in Translation reminds you that that’s okay. That you’ll find souls out there like yours. That you don’t have to walk the same path as everyone elseโeven if you’re having a breakdown at midnight trying to figure out how to fit yourself into their expectations.
To me, this movie is about life more than it is love. But the most beautiful thing about Lost in Translation is how it can be anything you need it to be. Just like life.