Movies come in all shapes and sizes.
Some are big and loud and thrilling, while
others are small, finely crafted gems.
And there are few love stories as soft-spoken
and full of soul as Sofia Coppola’s Lost
in Translation.
It’s a movie that sneaks up on you, using
artistry that feels so natural that the precision
of its craft is only clear if you think about
it afterward.
This film also wrestles with complex questions
about modern consumer culture and how cinema
can authentically portray a woman’s point
of view.
And did I mention it’s funny too?
Even as it tugs at your heart.
[intro music plays]
Writer-director Sofia Coppola had only made
one feature film before she began working
on Lost in Translation.
That film, The Virgin Suicides, was based
on a book by Jeffrey Eugenides.
It tells the story of the mysterious and doomed
Lisbon sisters in 1974 Detroit, as remembered
by the neighborhood boys some forty years
later.
It’s a complex, dreamy movie that establishes
Coppola as a master of tone, perspective,
and imagery.
With Lost in Translation, Coppola both expanded
her scope – exploring the eclectic world
of contemporary Japan – while also focusing
the drama on two central characters.
Scarlett Johansson plays Charlotte, a 20-year-old
woman who’s come to Tokyo with her rock-and-roll
photographer husband, played by Giovanni Ribisi.
A recent college graduate and philosophy major,
Charlotte is adrift – not only in this foreign
city, but in her marriage, and even her life.
Bob Harris is a movie star.
Or… he was a movie star.
Now he flies to Tokyo to spend a week shilling
for a high-profile Japanese whisky company
– recording commercials, making talk show
appearances, and suffering from insomnia.
In one of the film’s many ironies, Bob is
played by Bill Murray, who was once a major
movie star himself.
Unlike Bob, Murray has emerged from the
height of his fame into a late career full
of meaty roles that are often as sorrowful
as they are funny.
And his Bob Harris is no exception.
This film is patient.
We spend a lot of time getting to know Charlotte
and Bob alone before they ever meet each other.
We see them trapped in the interior spaces
of their luxury hotel, dealing with spouses
who don’t seem to be on the same wavelength,
and mesmerized by the lights and sounds of
the city.
When they do start to interact with one
another, it’s tentative.
A smile in an elevator.
A look across a crowded lounge.
And eventually, a brief conversation at the
bar.
When Charlotte’s husband heads out of town
for a few days to work, Charlotte asks Bob
to come out with her and some of her Japanese
friends.
The two have an easy, funny rapport.
They seem to recognize something in one
another, like kindred spirits.
Charlotte: So, what are you doing here?
Bob: A couple of things.
Bob: Taking a break from my wife. Forgetting my son's birthday.
Bob: And getting paid two-million dollars to endorse a whiskey, when I could be doing a play somewhere.
Charlotte is an old soul, and Johansson plays
her with an effortless, mournful charm that
belies her youth.
Bob begins the film as a sad sack, until Charlotte
draws out his youthful charisma.
And Murray makes both sides of his character
feel genuine, funny, and moving.
As their relationship deepens, the movie never
quite goes where we expect.
Bob and Charlotte comfort and confide in one
another, essentially falling in love.
But they never cross the line into a physical
affair.
Although we do see them struggling to figure
out how physical love fits into their connection.
Near the end of the film, they share an awkward
set of goodnight kisses in an elevator.
But they seem to be grappling with what’s
expected of them, rather than any deep-seated
sexual desire.
In fact, the one thing that ruptures the bubble
of their relationship is when Bob sleeps with
an over-the-top lounge singer.
But Charlotte seems just as upset by his betrayal
as she is by the fact that she feels jealousy
at all.
Charlotte: Well, she is closer to your age.
In the film’s now-famous climactic scene,
Bob catches a glimpse of Charlotte from the
car on his way to the airport.
Feeling unsatisfied in their initial goodbye,
he leaps out of the car, runs across traffic,
and catches up with her.
They embrace, clinging to each other for a
brief moment, and then Bob whispers something
in Charlotte’s ear.
And we don’t get to hear it!
But... it must’ve been good.
Because when Bob gets back in his car and
as Charlotte walks away, they both seem more
content, as if a weight has been lifted.
It’s like their connection will somehow
last as they navigate the rest of their lives
and relationships.
The ultimate bittersweet ending.
Now, our job as critics isn’t just to figure
out what a film means.
It’s also to figure out how that meaning
is created.
Writing in Quarterly Review of Film and Video,
critic and scholar Todd McGowan makes a compelling
case for reading Lost in Translation as a
critique of global capitalism.
That’s right.
Capitalism.
we’re going there!
He writes, “Bob and Charlotte are able to
connect during their stay … precisely because
they each realize that the excess that bombards
them throughout Tokyo conceals a fundamental
absence.”
Throughout the film, both characters seem
to be alienated from the bustling city that
surrounds them.
Bob gazes in wonder the neon lights of Tokyo
in the opening scene, utterly overwhelmed.
And Charlotte is frequently sitting at her
hotel window, looking out at the city’s
urban sprawl, as if it’s all too much.
And when she does go out, the film assaults
us with the loud noises of an arcade, the
blaring music of a bar, and the cacophony
of some intense Tokyo traffic.
But when she finds moments away from it
all, she seems more at peace.
Like, in a quiet hallway outside a karaoke
lounge, at a shrine hidden in the city, or
when she stumbles across women practicing
ikebana, the Japanese art
of flower arrangement.
Bob is even more steeped in excess.
He’s even a part of it!
His picture is plastered all over billboards
and the sides of buses.
His old movies play on TV.
And he participates in a loud, garish Japanese
talk show.
He also keeps getting messages from his wife
back home in Los Angeles, with questions about
colors, fabrics, and decor as she remodels
his office.
Eventually, a FedEx box arrives with carpet
swatches – a dozen, basically indistinguishable
shades of burgundy.
The moment is played for laughs, but it only
increases Bob’s sense of being overwhelmed
by commerce.
So what does all this excess mean?
McGowan suggests that our desire for excessive
things and experiences is actually a product
of a global capitalist system.
And that system only functions when we’re
constantly hungry for more.
By this interpretation, Lost in Translation
is a film about unsatisfaction.
Bob is unsatisfied in his work.
Charlotte doesn’t even know where to start.
And they’re both unsatisfied in their marriages.
At the same time, both of their spouses personify
the quest for excess – from Bob’s wife’s
focus on the carpet squares, to how Charlotte’s
husband relishes his role as a photographer
promoting glamor and music.
In McGowan’s reading, our heroes connect
by rejecting a never-ending quest for material
satisfaction.
And they fill their lives with small, quiet
moments instead.
In a sense, they find meaning and forge their
relationship in absence, not excess.
They find joy in spontaneity, like a race
across traffic, an off-key karaoke performance,
or an unexpected ikebana ceremony.
These moments can’t be planned, can’t
be replicated, and – most importantly – can’t
be bought.
This focus on the power of absence is felt
throughout the film, which follows the pattern
of a traditional romance, from the meet-cute
to the climactic trip to the airport.
But at each major turn, the story withholds
key romantic beats.
Like, Bob and Charlotte never consummate their
relationship.
Or when Bob races after Charlotte in the final
scene, he’s not doing it to sweep her off
her feet for a happily ever after.
And his whisper is the ultimate expression
of absence.
The film builds to a climax that withholds
the final piece of information from us, and
in doing so, gives that absence incredible value.
It's also really important to note that this is a film about outsiders in Japan.
Directed by Sophia Coppola, an American who's an outsider herself.
And because of that, something else gets lost in translation.
This movie relies on some cultural stereotypes for comedy and plot.
For instance, the call girl who tries to talk
to Bob in broken English is a caricature — the
audience is meant to laugh at her mispronunciation,
which doesn’t have any other purpose in
the story.
And while ancient traditions, like temples
or ikebana, are glorified, the film also implies
that many modern Japanese people have forsaken
these “good” parts of their culture for
ridiculous excess.
Which is a really reductive perspective.
So even if it wasn’t intended, this movie
sometimes uses Japan as a backdrop and Japanese
people as gags in ways that reinforce stereotypes,
which can be harmful.
Now, it’s also worth looking at the characters
and relationship in Lost in Translation through
a feminist lens.
The year it was released, Sofia Coppola became
the third woman ever nominated for a Best
Director Oscar.
And Todd Kennedy makes the case in the journal
Film Criticism that Coppola’s films seem
to be building a feminine, if not feminist,
film form.
The foundational text of feminist film criticism
by theorist and filmmaker Laura Mulvey,
argues that mainstream cinema is overwhelmingly
films made by men, for men.
In these films, women are usually objects
of desire or derision.
In other words, they’re eye candy, or someone
to laugh at.
The camera takes the point of view of the
male gaze, putting audiences in the perspectives
of the male characters within the film as
they – and by extension we – look at
the women.
Kennedy argues that Sofia Coppola cleverly
uses the language, grammar, and tropes of
mainstream cinema and the male gaze to force
us to step back and consider our expectations
and complicity in that form.
A great example is the first shot of the film,
in which Scarlett Johansson is photographed
from behind and from the neck down, lying
on a bed.
She’s in a sweater and vaguely translucent
panties.
Kennedy writes, “This shot would seem to
match Mulvey’s description of a typical
Hollywood scene in which the camera is active/masculine
and the female character is passive/feminine—an
object of desire.”
However, Coppola holds the shot for thirty-six
seconds, which is forever in film time,
before the title of the film shows up.
And Kennedy goes on: “What is interesting
about this shot is that it lasts so long as
to become awkward—forcing the audience to
become aware of (and potentially even question)
their participation in the gaze.”
Time and again, the film inverts the usual
Hollywood presentation of women on screen.
Charlotte appears half-dressed a number of
times throughout the film, but these images
aren’t sexualized.
Instead, we’re asked to gaze with her
at the world outside her window.
So while the outward aesthetic is familiar
to mainstream cinema, our perspective doesn’t
slip into the male gaze tropes.
And these are just a couple examples of how
Coppola’s central female character is allowed
to be a whole, complex human.
Charlotte is wrapped up in a warm, funny,
bittersweet film that never condescends to
her for a laugh, and has got a lot more going
on than just pretty pictures.
Next time, we’ll take a journey with Sofia’s
father into the heart of darkness itself,
the Vietnam War as seen through the film Apocalypse
Now.
Crash Course Film Criticism is produced in
association with PBS Digital Studios.
You can head over to their channel to check
out a playlist of their latest amazing shows,
like The Art Assignment, Braincraft, and PBS
Space Time.
This episode of Crash Course was filmed in
the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio
with the help of these nice people and our
amazing graphics team is Thought Cafe.
