Lost in Translation

One thing that stood out to me while watching Lost in Translation was the theme of simplicity. Described by one of my classmates as "a movie without a plot", Lost in Translation is primarily a story of ordinary occurrences. Its Wikipedia plot description is composed of 4 flimsy paragraphs that barely take up a third of a page. And although some might argue that a movie with such a basic plot cannot say anything profound, I believe that because Lost in Translation does not try to portray too many themes at once, it portrays its few main ideas exceptionally well. The first of these two main ideas is the experience of being in another country, particularly Japan, alone. My dad, who has been to Tokyo by himself several times on business, told me that "you feel like you're on another planet when you're there, no one speaks English, they have lots of customs you don't understand, and everything just feels dark, mostly because you are up late at night and tired during the day because of the jet lag." These themes of alienation and insomnia are explored similarly through Bill Murray's character as he struggles to gel with Japanese culture during his commercial filming and appearance on a Japanese talk show, all while he cannot sleep at night. The second theme that is exceptionally well explored is the connection that can occur between two very different people when placed in an alienated setting. In a normal American setting Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson's characters would have never connected because of their obvious differences. One is male, the other is female, one is in his late forties or fifties, the other is in her early twenties, and they are both married. But in Japan, where everyone else seems so alien to these Americans, they are drawn to each other simply because they share the same nationality and speak the same language. While Lost in Translation is at its core a simple movie, it explores the themes of traveling in a foreign country and connecting with a stranger exceptionally well.