What if what a person had been searching for was right where they least expected it, halfway around the world? Would they pause reality for it? These are some of the questions that the Academy Award winning film, Lost in Translation, addresses to its audience. The BU Film Society chose this film, which debuted back in 2003, to screen for their first showing of the new school year. Lost in Translation deals with the idea of, well, being lost. At the same time, it also deals with the idea of being found in a really unlikely way.
The film, directed by Sofia Coppola, stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. Both end up in Tokyo at the same place and same time – fate, as some may have it. Murray is a washed up movie star who can only continue his fame by advertising a Japanese whiskey. Meanwhile, Johansson is fresh out of Yale and accompanies her career-driven and self-absorbed photographer husband on a business trip.
The opening scene begins with a minute-long shot of Scarlett Johansson’s rear end. As the film progresses, the audience sees less of that and more of Bob and Charlotte as they begin to grow closer. During long hours at the bar in their hotel, or out in the city of Tokyo surrounded by all the bright, flashing lights, they emerge as unlikely friends. Bob and Charlotte realize that they are each alone, each lost. They realize that they each have a hunger for something more than their life has to offer at the moment. They realize that can change.
Although the movie is a moody drama, there are equal amounts of comedy. Carried forward by Murray’s character Bob, he is successfully witty and crude in his sarcasm, but at the end of the night when he is tucking Charlotte into bed during one scene, his charm radiates on screen and the audience do not see an aging actor, but a lost boy. Murray’s performance shines throughout this film, and Johansson offers a good counterpart at just a mere age of 19, but the majority of the bond that their two characters form is from the silent intimacy that the film has to offer – they do not waste words.
But, their Tokyo adventure comes to an abrupt halt as they each have to go back to the lives they left behind. In the very end, as Bob gets out of his cab to run and find a wandering Charlotte in the middle of the city, he whispers something in her ear and they embrace, then part – but for good? That is left up to the audience to decide, as Coppola made it so the words uttered by Bob are not audible, but instead, the audience sits in silence and wonders what he said, and what their future could hold.
