Lost in Translation: Movie, DVD, HD DVD Review (2005)

(Originally published 2005)

In frenetic, jittery Tokyo where neon skyscrapers thrum and the air is alive with electric heat, Bob Harris (Bill Murray), a washed-up movie star, arrives dazed and drawn, looking nearly dead beneath the cartoon fluorescence.

He's in Tokyo to shoot a humiliating series of Suntory whiskey commercials, a gig that will make him millions, none of which, you can sense, will be enough to offset what little pride he has left.

A lonely insomniac in a city too alive to sleep, Bob is lost, wavering just this side of giving up on everything - his marriage, his life, his career. Then he meets young Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a lonely insomniac and recent Yale grad who's stuck in Tokyo with her inattentive husband, John (Giovanni Ribisi), a sketchy photographer shooting a rock band.

In their hotel, Bob and Charlotte first connect in an ascending elevator; the only Caucasians aboard, they share a knowing smile over the sea of black hair. Later, at the hotel bar, they meet and share a drink while mediocre American lounge singers belt out love songs behind them.

What spills from this is the heart of director Sofia Coppola's moody second film, "Lost in Translation," a movie about two lives intersecting just as they're about to burst apart.
The film, which Coppola also wrote and produced, joins her first film, "The Virgin Suicides," in that it's more content to observe than it is to meddle.

Her script is especially spare, allowing for the sort of silences that tend to frighten today's contemporary American directors, but which, when handled as well as they are here, say more than a mouthful of the most carefully chosen words.

Perhaps taking a cue from her father, Francis Ford Coppola, Coppola refuses to rush a moment, her movie has the languid intensity of a dream. As Bob and Charlotte grow close and the sexual energy between them rises, they aren't hurried into the sack in an effort to find out what they could mean to each other in bed - that would be too easy. Instead, Coppola sends them out of their hotel and into the city, where they find in the clashing disconnect of another culture an undeniable connection between themselves.

With its Pachinko arcades, karaoke parlors, strip clubs and dance clubs, Tokyo is a major force in this movie, but what's remarkable is how this vibrant city, with all its flash and chaos, fades beneath the power of performances by Murray and Johansson that border on greatness.

The last scene, less urgent but just as unforgettable as the final scene in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," is actually more powerful for what it leaves unsaid. Words and tears are exchanged between Bob and Charlotte just when all seems lost, but by not allowing us to hear what's being said, Coppola pulls the movie out from under us, turning her study in romantic reawakening and disillusionment into one of romantic mystery.

Grade: A-