Women's Pictures - Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation
Thursday, May 14, 2015 at 3:30PM
Happy 44th birthday, Sofia Coppola! I do love when kismet works in our favor. On this special day, we are celebrating Coppola’s second feature film, the 2003 critical hit Lost in Translation. (And, since it’s also my birthday, all pictures will be of Scarlett Johansson.) The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director, which made Coppola the third woman to be nominated for Best Director. However, like her predecessor Jane Campion had a decade earlier, Coppola walked away with Best Original Screenplay at the 2004 ceremony. Not bad for a second film!
The setup sounds familiar. Bob (Bill Murray in the middle of a career renaissance) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson on the cusp of superstardom) are two insomniac Americans in a hotel who meet accidentally over and over before they finally decide to meet on purpose. Bob is a movie star in Japan to shoot a whiskey commercial that he hates. Charlotte is the wife of a photographer whose job and ego keep him busy. Once the two wanderers meet, they fall into an intense friendship made all the more exciting and sad for the knowledge that it exists only as long as their stay in Japan does.
It could be a romance, but Coppola doesn’t choose the conventional route. Instead, she meanders through a character study, aided by strong performances by Murray and Johansson, who are as expressive in silence as when speaking. However, while Bob and Charlotte’s May/December friendship is the center around which the film turns, they are not Coppola’s only focus. Japan is as complex and colorful a character as the two Americans exploring it.
Lost in Translation displays Japan from an outsider’s perspective: exciting, bright, busy, scary, and lonely. Coppola has a talent for showing the intimate in impersonal spaces: the crowded streets, the smoky bars, and especially the anonymously bland rooms of the hotel make up the strange new world that Bob and Charlotte explore with alternating interest and isolation. Cinematographer Lance Acord lights interiors with diffuse, cold overhead lighting, which gives everyone - especially the craggy-faced Murray - a haunted look. The hotel itself becomes an isolating entity, separating our two main characters from Japan, but allowing them to watch it from a distance.
Coppola uses her two leads to explore different emotional and visual facets of Japan. Through Bob, we see the confusing, loud conventions of Japanese culture. Through Charlotte, we see the quiet beauty of the city. When they explore together, the joy and melancholy of these two perspectives play off each other, highlighting the humor of an emergency room misunderstanding or the solitary contentment of a shared cigarette in a karaoke bar.
As with Sofia Coppola’s first film, Lost in Translation does not feel like a sophomore effort. The movie works as a continuation of The Virgin Suicides, Coppola’s first film, which had also expressed melancholy tone and themes of isolation through enigmatic characters and an evocative location. However, unlike that film, in Lost in Translation Coppola peoples her movie with characters who feel real. Bob and Charlotte are quietly messy people with tumultuous inner lives which only occasionally reach the surface. They are both searching for meaning, but find each other in the meantime. Coppola’s second film is a slow-but-mature, bright-but-sad meditation on loneliness. So her next film, made 3 years later, will be a complete turnaround.
Up Next:
5/21 - Marie Antoinette (2006) - Coppola courted her first bit of controversy for this anachronistic, pop-fuelled biopic, again starring Kirsten Dunst as the infamous monarch. (Amazon Instant Watch)
5/28 - Somewhere (2010) - Sofia Coppola turns inward for inspiration with a movie about a famous actor and his daughter living at the Chateau Marmont. (Amazon Instant Watch) (Netflix)
Reader Comments (22)
4 Oscar noms - Murray for Best Actor
Anne Marie, thank you for articulating so well what I found so compelling about this film but was unable to do so. Loneliness is palpable in this movie, and Coppola creates such a strong sense of atmosphere that dialog, plot and narrative resolution are unnecessary. Lovely writeup!
One note: LIT was also nominated for Best Actor. And from the performances AMPAS chose, I think he should have taken it.
Happy Birthday, Anne Marie. Yay! ;-)
Murray was deserving of the gold .... Sean Penn was a fairly strong 2nd
place.
Happy Birthday Anne Marie!
Many happy returns of the day!
Whoops, you're all right! 4 Oscar noms. I'll edit it tonight. Thanks everyone!
As someone without much of a social base, and who lives in sprawling Los Angeles, and someone with mild depression, this film spoke well to me. Beatiful, melancholy film. Murray should have at least tied with Penn.
Happy Birthday, Anne Marie!!!
I found Penn quite overwrought in Mystic River. He should have been nominated for 21 Grams.
Oh, lordy, how I needed this movie when it came out! The scene of Scarlett on the phone, getting choked up trying to describe her sadness to some oblivious friend was such a cinemtic turning point for post-college Mike in Canada, perfectly describing both how natural it can be to try to avoid conversations about sadness, and my own difficulties in communicating actual feelings to actual people. As Bill Murray becomes her guide to adjusting to the never-ending confusions of adulthood, he was doing the same for me.
Love this film so much - I could gush all day about it, but I have too many other things to do, so for now I'll just leave a comment about Anna Farris's BRILLIANT cameo and how much she makes me laugh and leave it at that.
Lovely writing as always, Anne Marie!
Happy B-day Anne Marie.
For me, this is THE GREATEST FILM..... EVER!!!!!!!!! Here's 10 Reasons why...
Lovely film. Lovely write-up. I visited Tokyo for a few days not long after this film came out and I feel the film captured the city very well. And as for the Oscars, for me Murray deserved Best Actor over Penn, who was way too over-the-top.
I just caught this film on HBO in a hotel over the weekend. I have not seen it since it was first released on DVD a decade ago when I was still in high school. The humor and loneliness spoke to me, as did the young ScarJo. This was a beautiful write up.
And a very happy birthday to you.
Happy Birthday, hope you go out and celebrate!
Hapi Bday Anne Marie!
I still rem watchin LiT in late 2003 in the cinema when it 1st came out & was profoundly touched by this little cool, quietly beautiful indie film. It’s like Coppola’s ode to the magical city of Tokyo.
For me, this is the best film of 2003 & Murray & ScarJo, the best actor/actress of that year.
Murray took a departure from his funny man routine & gave a poignant, melancholic & witty performance about a famous has-been shooting an ad for the Jap market (the similarity is not so subtle…lol). He shld’ve won the Oscar, but alas, the academy had regarded his performance as a comedic turn & u know how comedy is deemed lesser in the eyes of the voters. Between this & Penn’s OTT tragic anti-hero in Mystic River (who I thought gave a better performance in 21 Grams that year), I much preferred Murray’s subtle & understated charm.
& ScarJo was unjustly snubbed by the Oscar of a nom!! I blamed the botched PR campaign trying to push her into the best supp cat when she was clearly a co-lead here. She was definitely the breakout star in 2003, with this & another luminous turn in The Girl w the Pearl Earring.
For me, the best & most touching scene is their farewell hug at the end. What Bob said to Charlotte is ultimately not important, but that moment lingers on……..Both of them will alws have fond memory of ea other….they will alws have Tokyo
Still an incredible movie. Happy birthday to Sofia *and* Anne Marie!
Happy Birthday, ladies!
I love, no L-O-V-E, LiT. A beautiful pas de deux, terrific understanding of story and tone, and one of the most perfectly ambiguous, yet deeply satisfying endings of all time.
For me Bill Murray is the Michael Keaton of the aughts; his loss still stings. (For the record, it's Murray > Depp > Kingsley > Law > Penn, and then only for 21 Grams.)
Scarlett Johansson should have been nominated for an Oscar for this movie!
Afterall, she won the BAFTA, and it's actually right up on the Academy's alley: a young beautiful actress greatly acting in a Best Picture nominee.
Heck, she could have even won it, just look at the examples from Audrey Hepburn to Jennifer Lawrence.
Scarlett was equally great in Girl with a Pearl Earring. She canceled herself.
And Focus tried category fraud, too.
fadhil, not even Jesus himself could have beaten Charlize that year. And in any other year I would have been rooting for Diane. But Charlize deserved it and then some.
This movie only improves with age. It's by far the best film of 2003 with the best performances too. Thanks for writing such an elegant and spot on article. And, Happy Birthday!
This is my second favorite movie of the '00s (behind The Royal Tenenbaums) and Murray's is my favorite performance of the decade. Sadly, I don't think Sofia ever again came close to showing the same understanding of humanity she had on display here, although I like all her films, but I'm always hopeful.