Bob Harris: Bill Murray
Charlotte: Scarlett Johansson
John: Giovanni Ribisi
Singer: Catherine Lambert
Director: Yutaka Tadokoro
Press Agent: Kazuyoshi Minamimagoe
Press Agent: Kazuko Shibata
The odd couple.
If current forecasts prove accurate, Lost In Translation
could be one of the few films with the potential to cause an upset at next
month’s Academy Awards by pipping
Return of the King
to the best picture Oscar and/or Peter Jackson to best director. Such acclaim
isn’t lightly earned, particularly for a low budget indie film from a female
director making her only her second feature, but is it merited?
Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a famous Hollywood actor spending a week in
Japan to promote a whisky in return for a massive payday. While he’d much
prefer to be doing a play somewhere, he’s happy enough to take the money as well
as getting a break from his clearly troubled marriage. What he hasn’t anticipated
is how alien and overwhelming Japan would be and, as he stumbles from his hotel
room to the studio to the hotel bar and back to his room, a mixture of insomnia
and loneliness moves him close to a breakdown.
Even in the quietest moments...
Staying at the same hotel is Charlotte, a young American woman who’s travelled
to Japan with her photographer husband and who is similarly bored and lonely,
left on her own for days on end while her husband goes off to a shoot. When the
pair finally meet up in the bar, their shared predicament is the beginning of a
touching and often hilarious friendship as they try to come to terms with their
surroundings and their discontentment.
Lost In Translation is a complete and utter joy from first to last. It’s
a masterpiece of understatement, bristling with subtly exchanged glances and
unspoken yearnings. It’s a beautifully constructed romance in the truest sense.
And it’s a moving evocation of frustration and longing that gives us a real
reason to care about two hugely endearing people.
An alternative poster featuring Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson has consistently had an edge lacking in her
contemporaries like Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles and she shines here, with a
wisdom and a presence that belies her young age. Murray has always had a genius
for deadpan comic delivery while at the same time being undervalued as a proper
actor, but watch Groundhog Day, watch Rushmore, watch Tootsie
and you’ll see how good he really is. Watch Lost In Translation and
you’ll see an actor giving the performance of his life. Every slope of his
shoulders, every twitch of his cheek, every glint in his eye will have you
laughing heartily even as you suppress a sorrowful sigh.
I’m not sure I’ve quite forgiven Sofia Coppola for ruining The Godfather
Part III, and if she does steal the Oscar from under Peter Jackson’s nose
I’ll have even less to endear her to me. On this evidence though, I couldn’t
begrudge her for a second.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
