Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation is a comedy-drama written and directed by Sophia Coppola and many movie critics have called this movie possibly the best of year (2003) and a modern masterpiece. I myself was very surprised as what this movie really was. As the movie started out, I thought it would be a love story between Bob Harris (an aging American action movie star, arrives in Tokyo to film an advertisement who is going through a midlife crisis) and Charlotte (a young college graduate, who gets left behind in her hotel room by her husband, John, a celebrity photographer on assignment in Tokyo), but that's not what it was at all, which is what I think made this movie unique - it was not the cliche and predictable romance movie.

This film told the story of Bob Harris (Bill Murray), an American movie star that comes to Tokyo to film a whiskey commercial for which he will be paid $2 million. Staying in the same Tokyo hotel is Charlotte (Scarlett Johanssen), a newlywed tagging along with her rock photographer husband, John (a typically awkward Giovanni Ribisi). Along the way, Charlotte and Bob run into each other and begin a 'brief encounter' that profoundly affects them both. The two meet at a hotel in Tokyo Japan and develop a strange yet intimate relationship throughout out the film. I expected their relationship to turn into romance, but it was more a friendship throughout the film. It began as a comedy of culture clash, Harris sarcastic and confused at the Japanese when entering his hotel, and even more befuddled in a hilarious scene where he shoots the whiskey commercial (and one later during a photo shoot). Coppola delivers Bob into her movie with the impression that it'll be all about him (he has plenty of great scenes, even at just the beginning), but Charlotte enters the story, and we're never quite the same. Scarlett Johanssen plays Charlotte with just the right amount of emotion that her initially morose and soul-searching character doesn't seem silly. Bob, on the other hand, seems to have it made, but Murray lets a current of loneliness run across that memorable face that seems to hint at something more. He gets comical faxes from his wife about bookshelves and carpet samples, but he gives off the impression that he's come to the point where he doesn't even care anymore. Bob is certainly alone for a time in Tokyo, but Murray gives off the impression that things at home aren't too hot either. It is evident that Lost in Translation represents the confusion between the main characters with the way Bob and Charlotte felt towards each other and what each want to do with their lives.