HondaReport.com Movie Review
Title: Lost in Translation
Pupule’s Rating: * * stars

MPPR Rating: R
Date of Viewing: Monday, November 3, 2003
Location: Dole Cannery

By Paul Honda
Sunday, September 28, 2003

Before I begin, the guts of this film can be summarized by a quick glimpse of a bookend scene. (This may spare you the effort of reading this entire review.) Charlotte, the opposite to Bill Murray’s lead character, Bob Harris, is wandering about in this foreign land of Japan. She stops in at a shrine to see monks perform a droning chant and ceremony. She grins. Scene ends. Then she’s on the phone with a friend who is halfway between work duties and the actual dialogue. Charlotte says, “I was watching these monks in a ceremony, and I, I couldn’t even feel anything!” Her friend soon cuts her off and has to hang up.

Any character who expects to “feel” something by watching monks light incense belongs in a very limited role, but Sofia Coppola draws Charlotte up as the lead, which is akin to pumping steroids into a cadaver, hoping something will liven him up.

It doesn’t work that way, does it?

There are films that build believable storylines about strangers in the night (and day) who come across one another for a fleeting moment in time, fall in love, and consider the taboo possibility of leaving their marriages behind for the flight and fancy of romance.

Then there those attempts at borderline, “platonic” relationships that neither bring about resolution, repercussion nor believability for a second.

That is the biggest problem of many with Lost in Translation, a much-hyped, universally loved new film situated completely in the barely exotic locale of Tokyo. On the surface of this “When on vacation, let hell break loose” mentality, Bill Murray stars as a monotone, former movie star who uses witty comebacks and whiskey breath to charm a seemingly gullible 24-year-old Ivy League graduate known as Charlotte.

It is also a third-time film by former actress-cum-director-writer Coppola, who displays a genuine feel for subtle, understated dialogue. Unfortunately, Coppola’s writing plays down the range that Murray, one of my favorite former-comedian-turned-comedy-film-stars, would have brought to the big screen. This tactical error by Coppola is one of several missed opportunities that could have elevated this artsy picture into something on the level of another understated, but far superior character vehicle, Matchstick Men.

The two core characters, Bob and Charlotte, form a friendship that is based more out of convenience of the hotel they both are staying in; neither takes to Japan well in their “forced” stay there. He’s there to make money while contemplating the flatness of his boring marriage. She’s there, a Yale graduate with a degree in—is this even plausible for such a stagnant woman?—philosophy, tagging along with her photographer husband. (As if they don’t have outstanding photographers in Japan, land of Nikon and Fuji? The cinematographer of Signs is from Japan. Is he the only good one?)

Coppola evidently refuses to grant realism into her film on that level. She does bring a dose of naturalness to the conversations Murray and Charlotte have. But does Charlotte, a well-educated woman, truly represent someone who would “tag along” with her husband without raising a fuss after two years? Improbable.

It is, in many other levels, a story about two people who lack the courage—dare I say that they are pampered cowards who come from wealthy backgrounds—to initiate change in the most fundamental areas of their lives. While I would appreciate that scenario from a blue-collar character like Adrian (Talia Shire) in Rocky (she worked at the pet store quietly and diligently) or from either lead role in The Bridges of Madison County (Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood flexed their acting chops as their characters took desperately serious risks), it doesn’t work at all for Charlotte.

Two years of feeling pent up and without a personal identity—she is unemployed through the entire marriage—would trigger frustration and anger. But what do we get from Charlotte? It’s a lot of half-grins and smiles—very Japanese in an ironic way—without the kind of longing, vulnerability and depth that Talia Shire brought to her Adrian character not so long ago.

The one pearl of wisdom voiced in the movie comes from Murray’s character, who is a 50ish former acting god who is facing the twilight of his career by traveling to Japan to sell whiskey in ads and commercials for $2 million. In one of their quiet conversations, Bob tells Charlotte, “Once you get to know who you are, the rest of it doesn’t bother you as much.”

And as always, Charlotte grins a half-smile and we are left to guess what’s bouncing around in that head of hers since it appears that her job is to look pretty and leave the poignant stuff to the older ‘gentleman.’

With all of Coppola’s oysters on the grill, it’s a shame that only one pearl turns up, and the rest of them, when finally pried open, are completely, utterly and painfully empty. There’s no meat, no substance, no buy-in to the relationship between Bob and Charlotte. I did not believe for a second that Charlotte falls for Bob. And if you believe it’s possible for a daily-dose-of-alcohol-equals-a-pint-of-whiskey 50-year-old man to lie in a bed with a pouty, alluring 24-year-old and have no more intimacy than a touch of her injured toe, you may well be a sheltered actress-director-writer who knows very little about real 50-year-old men who cavort with aging lounge lizard singers in the midst of a drunken night in the hotel bar.

But enough with my disappointment. For now.

The film starts out with cheeky shots of Charlotte’s well-shaped gluteus maximus, the better to get the attention of movie reviewers. Need I remind you that a LARGE percentage of reviewers are middle-aged men facing (or in the center of) mid-life crises. Like Murray’s character, they can only fantasize about temporarily leaving the U.S. (and the droll wife and whiny kids, as we learn over the course of several international phone calls from back home regarding new carpet colors) for a $2 million payday overseas while being halfway approached by a beautiful 24-year-old girl (yes, girl, not woman, as you’ll soon see) with full, collagen-filled lips and booty-hugging pink panties (two lingering, unobligatory shots during the film). Oh, and did I mention there’s plenty of boozing in a swank hotel bar?

How cheesy does the dialogue get? Near the end, Charlotte admits to Bob, “When I first met you, you were at the bar in that tuxedo. I thought that was very dashing.”

First of all, no 24-year-old girl in the year 2003 says “dashing,” unless it’s Christmas season and she’s singing “Jingle Bells.” In fact, that line she gave Bob is along the lines of what many 24-year-old gold-diggers like to say to graying, insecure middle-aged men. Those old farts, like Bob, happen to open their first real conversations with young hoochie-mamas with the words, “I’m here in Japan to do a commercial for a whisky company that’s paying me two million dollars.”

I could NOT make up cheesier lines. Bob says Velveeta and Charlotte jumps modestly with stilted joy. I could never come up with such naïveté.

To Coppola’s credit, she’s writing about what she knows. Unfortunately, for those of us who forked over at least 8 bucks to see this blathering stream of Tokyo scenery—the extra-long shots of city streets, neon signs and traditional tourist spots get old after the first 10 minutes, but Coppola sticks it in our faces to prove that she, indeed, was in Japan, and that we don’t need to flip to a Japanese TV station to see the country—the film was an hour too long.

Perhaps most disappointing of all the elements that went sour in this film was the complete lack of subplots and secondary characters. The closest Coppola gets is a convenient little circle of 20ish party kids from Tokyo who spend a long night with Bob and Charlotte in strip bars and karaoke rooms. It is in one of those karaoke rooms when Charlotte’s long gaze into Bob's eyes—while he sings an ‘80s tune to complete, but fitting mediocrity—that we finally get a glimpse of her deepening affection for the old guy.

But without any secondary characters—a triad, if you will—to balance out her perspective, and Murray’s, as well, we can only guess what they really long for. Is it lust? Is it romance? Is it simply to have an ear to hear our woes dressed up as a cowardly lion story? The Japanese friends of Charlotte are reduced to silly, joint-smoking, booze-gulping semi-strangers who are gone almost as quickly as they arrive. It is utterly a waste that Charlotte has no communication whatsoever—at least in what’s shown on film—with anyone from Japan. At least Murray’s big-shot character has a cast of Japanese translators and execs to report to each morning. Whoop-dee-doo...

Murray is at his best in this film when the perspective—and it is vague for more than halfway through the film of just who’s point of view it is coming from—comes solely from his self-effacing humor. The weariness in his eyes and rigidity of his posture are dead-on accurate of a man who longs for space from the same woman—his droll wife—he wants tenderness from.

But when the monologues—brief as they are—turn into quick dialogues with Charlotte, the conversation crawls to a snail’s pace. The same 24-year-old who uses words like “dashing” is also unfazed by her own meandering desire to hold Bob's hand while walking through the hotel lobby, almost like buddies, but not quite so platonic.

It is incredibly silly to believe that a 24-year-old woman, on the verge of violating her withering code of ethics, is content to hold hands with a man and not go to the next physical level quickly. This is NOT 1954, and if you want to believe that Charlotte—who spends her nights exploring new age messages—is a sweet virgin, remember that she is 1. married, 2. modeling form-fitting pink panties whenever she’s in her room, sitting against the window for all binocular owners to see, and 3. seems to have all the answers when it comes to Murray, even though she is a ditz in her reality—philosophy degree and all.

Those of you who’ve been 24 and encountered women of that age who have few moral restraints—maybe you were one of them—know exactly what I’m talking about. Two empty hotel rooms—Charlotte’s annoying husband is gone for the weekend on a project while Murray is completely alone—and two adults with shaky vows of monogamy to their spouses—plus a lot of liquor, and we’re to believe that they don’t jump in the sack from the start?

Coppola must’ve been sipping some of that champagne from the hotel bar when she penned this script.

For all the sarcasm and disbelief I share about this film, there is some levity I’ll grant it. It gambles heavily on its two lead actors. Coppola allows for plenty of silence, which would be good if there were more substantial out-loud thinking by Bob and Charlotte.

I won’t end without backing up my critical remarks with something substantial, so here goes:

A. Who casted Charlotte? Scarlett Johansson has a future that could rival the likes of a younger Andie MacDowell (and her breakthrough role in Sex, Lies and Videotape), but that assumes Johansson learns to express little more than one emotion for an entire 100 minutes of film. She’s young. She’s pretty. She’s got a nice arse. But MacDowell was spectacularly complex and conflicted when she faced the possibilities that would erode her moral base in Sex, Lies & Videotape. Granted, MacDowell was a bit older than Johansson is, but by goodness, could Coppola have please, pretty please have casted someone with some depth? Johansson was at her best when she faced Murray at his hotel room door, learning that he had committed adultery with the lounge lizard mama. Her lightning-quick, yet supremely subtle switch from glazed, lovey-dovey eyes to stunned silence was mesmerizing. Yet that was all Johansson could—or perhaps was permitted to—express in the entire film. A better casting job would have netted Liv Tyler, who has the same slightly ethereal quality with more intensity and certainly without the ditziness.

B. Let Bill be more Billish. I would have hacked up my popcorn and mochi crunch had Murray been too outlandish, re: Caddyshack, Stripes, and I would also have been nauseous had he been a gangster (I’ve done myself the favor of mentally blocking that ridiculous film from the ‘90s) type again. But for heaven’s sake, why did Coppola shackle Murray? His only bout of real goofiness comes when he’s wheelchairing Charlotte through a hospital, and then on the streets. That worked for seconds before he began to play the “white guy who’s funnier and smarter than You People” routine, and it brings me back to the lack of ANY decent secondary (Japanese) characters to give this film some totally needed backbone.

C. Did anyone ask some real, female 24-year-old Yale graduates if classmates like Charlotte really exist? The odds of that, as I blabbered on earlier, are long.

And so are the odds that America’s balding, fattened-up movie reviewers viewed this film critically any more than their bumps got goosey from looking at Charlotte’s round rump.

Score one for inside marketing, but it’s a real shame that Murray was handicapped by some truly underwhelming writing. What could have developed into his best role ever—perhaps an Oscar nomination—was wrung out to dry by Coppola’s fabrication of what real 50-year-old men think. And do.

We never get a chance to contemplate exactly what Bob’s wife—the movie star's “widow”—has endured in raising the children with Bob away much of the time. We only hear Bob mention once that she doesn’t seem to “need” him. What I hear is a coward who won’t initiate a simple “I love you” to a fatigued housewife—though he tries after she hangs up on a typically morose conversation.

Nor do we get a real feel for Charlotte’s busy husband, who simply is choppy, frazzled and annoying in the few minutes he’s on screen. It’s all about Charlotte finding herself more “mean” than she likes, and that any American is better than none, so she’ll go hang with Bob and make a game of hiding her affection toward him during the only scene with any real accountability at all—when she and Bob are holding hands, hiding their faces from Charlotte's husband's acquaintance, an American actress singing karaoke in the hotel lobby area. I feel empathy for no one; not Bob, Charlotte nor their spouses, and for good reason.

Had Coppola revealed the spouses to be flawed, but faithful, how would we feel anything for Bob and Charlotte? The problem is, it would've been better for us to hate Bob and Charlotte than to utterly be bored by them. The rigormortis of their marriages is a byproduct of their real selves: bland, whiny and tepid. Which is probably why Coppola never allowed Bob to turn the mirror on Bob in a brutally honest way, and likewise with Charlotte. For all her brooding and education, not much comes about.

Another few rewrites could have saved this movie. Coppola might do herself some real good—I liked the natural pace and flow of the understated conversations, remember?—by getting OUT from under the wings of the Coppola clan and into some broader new horizons. She deserves the truth. So did Charlotte. So did Murray’s character.

And so did we. That isn’t the dial tone that is torturing your ears. It is the drone of Lost in Translation's key players. Never was the possibility of infidelity so mortifyingly blasé. And believe me, that ain’t how it is in the real world.

Coppola could have played her cards better by forcing us to escape, suspending any sense of reality. She didn’t allow it to happen, using gray shades instead of vivid color to bring Bob and Charlotte to life.

By the time I checked my watch for a third time, it was too late to escape. I was nowhere near the exit door, though I imagined it would’ve ended my torment. Perhaps the only way my suffering would’ve been muted is this: If Murray had played a retired plumber vacationing rather than a “poor” soul of a wealthy movie star. Had Charlotte nuzzled with the plumber, for better or worse, it would have made for some real acting—and character study—instead of the quiet dungeon some of us non-mid-life crisis watchers endured.

Extra: For a deeper, more entertaining look at Japan’s cities and countryside jewels, watch “Soko Ga Shiritai” daily at 7 p.m. on KIKU, Channel 9.

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