In Lost in Translation Bob Harris (Bill Murray), an American movie star, has come to Tokyo to appear in Suntory whisky ads. (Click here for information about the production of whisky in Japan.) He's been big since the '70s but the Suntory gig is a sign that his career has faded. Though he's being paid $2 million, treated like a VIP, and put up in the luxurious Park Hyatt Hotel, he's glumly alienated from his surroundings, the various Japanese people associated with the whiskey spots, the other English-speakers staying in the hotel, his family, and finally himself. It's more than jet lag that keeps him up nights downing the product he's come to promote in the hotel bar. Notes and faxes and calls from his wife of 25 years back home just keep pushing him under.
Murray played a depleted entertainment figure in Groundhog Day (1993) and gave a spectacular performance, investing his trademark sarcasm with hostility that we could see was an extension of self-disgust. Sofia Coppola, who wrote and directed Lost in Translation, revisits that role but doesn't let it grow out of the Bill Murray persona we're familiar with. The role is barely written at all, with the odd result that whereas in Groundhog Day Murray acted with greater star power than ever playing a dead-ended mid-market weatherman, in Lost in Translation he plays a movie star but doesn't seem like one. We see why Bob's depressed, but the movie has taken away from Murray the only way he has to express character. Maybe people have been so impressed by Murray's low-keyed, unremarkable performance because the fey, listless movie sucks them into Bob's funk and lowers their expectations.
Which isn't to say that Coppola doesn't try to entertain us. In the first half hour she strangely resorts to tacky jokes about the Japanese. They're short, they talk funny, they're extremely formal, their slick entertainment is like a parody of American entertainment, which by implication becomes the "real" thing. At best these jokes are mystifying--a beautiful, elegant woman comes into Bob's room and urges him to "lip her stockings"; when he touches her she screams rape but won't let him pull away from her--which isn't to say any of them works. I've laughed at this crude shtick when the moviemakers and comedians flouted good taste with impudent gusto, e.g., Jerry Lewis as the buck-toothed specialist from Tokyo in Living It Up (1954) and Mickey Rooney as Holly Golightly's jabbering, aggrieved neighbor in Blake Edwards's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). (It's inevitably live-action cartoon work.) Coppola doesn't seem to think she's made that kind of movie and so the jokes remain inert and seem shockingly low-grade for a movie of sensibility that has invited critics to call it a masterpiece.
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Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Thanks Alan, authoritative as always - your email address has been bouncing. Do you have a new one or do I need to do something to "white list" mine of something?
2 - Natalie Davis
"The only human beings of any race in the movie?"
Explain, please. I have not yet seen the film. Are you saying that the Murray and Johannson characters are the only people focused on in the film?
3 - Alan Dale
Thanks for writing.
They are the only characters the movie focuses on, but I meant more than that. The Japanese are all freakish and the other Americans are treated as people that Bob and Charlotte (and we in the audience) wouldn't want to connect with. Bob and Charlotte are the only people who seem like people, like "us." Everyone else is either grotesque or dense, viewed not subjectively through Bob and Charlotte's alienation but as though objectively they would cause anyone to become alienated.
4 - Paul
Having lived in Japan for several years, I can say the film got the feel of everything about as right as can be, down to the goofy Japanese TV shows.
"In the first half hour she strangely resorts to tacky jokes about the Japanese. They're short, they talk funny, they're extremely formal, their slick entertainment is like a parody of American entertainment, which by implication becomes the "real" thing. "
The funny thing about all that is that it's Japanese humor. If you've ever watched a lot of Japanese TV, you'd recognize the schtick right away. The movie's humor is structured exactly like Japanese humor. The film could've been a Japanese television production and featured on the roundtable shows that come on NHK at night. What would've made the movie perfect is, right after the story completed, we went back to a studio with about 8-10 commentators of varying ages and sex talking about what they'd just seen right before they cut to the two chicks doing movie reviews topless in a bubble bath.
Most of the movie, apart from a few of the character's relationships and interactions, feels like an homage.
5 - Alan Dale
Thanks for your comment. Interesting to know about Japanese culture, but it doesn't change my view of the movie, for several reasons. 1) Even if the movie renders Japanese humor accurately that doesn't make the humor or the movie good. A Japanese movie set in America could accurately render the comedy of our TV sitcoms and big movie comedies and still be lame. 2) Nothing Sofia Coppola has said in interviews indicates she has your level of acquaintance with Japanese culture. So I'm not sure it was her intention in any case. This matters because 3) in the movie it's a question of perspective: the Japanese may tell jokes at their own expense that are just like the ones in the movie, but Coppola isn't Japanese, the movie was made for American audiences, and in our pop culture history those jokes have an entirely different resonance. And finally 4) the shift in tone between the Japanese jokes and the quiet bond b/w Charlotte and Bob is jarring to me. Maybe Coppola didn't intend it to be, but that then doesn't speak well for her control as writer/director.
Alan Dale
6 - Paul
I agree with you on the jarring break with the first half of the story and the relationship between Murray and his lady friend. The movie lost my interest at that point. I only went to see it because I miss Japan terribly and the movie presented me with an opportunity to see it again.
What I think it did get right is the utter strangeness you feel the first time you're there. The place is alien and I think she got the feel of what you're thinking as you try to take it all in. The people are strange, the culture doesn't make any sense and the look of the place is garish. It's not until you've been there awhile that you start to learn and appreciate why things are the way they are, but at the beginning, it's just strange. That's what I got from it and it reminded me of what I was feeling and experiencing when I first got there. Perhaps that was the jive I was picking-up and I just projected my own back-history with the place onto the film. In hindsight, I think I was seeing something that wasn't there.
The Japanese don't really have the same race-conscious sensitivity as we do, unless it has to do with the Koreans (but that's a whole 'nother can of worms), and their entertainment reflects their perceptions and mores. They're not angels by any means. They have a superiority complex that would make a Nazi blush. You should see how Westerners are employed in their entertainment. It's like someone brought a chimp or other exotic creature onto the set for them to gawk at and mock. It's not as bad as it used to be, but that element of the barbarous and hairy gaijin still enjoys a strong undercurrent in Japanese culture and society.
I agree with you that the movie's first half would come off as a bunch of Jap jokes to people who are ignorant of the culture, but at the same time, it's a fairly honest depiction of what a lot of Americans and other Westerners think of the place and the people when they first get there.
7 - randy
While I appreciate Alan's very in-depth analysis of this movie, I'm left cold by what I read. I enjoyed this film on many levels, and am wondering if it’s actually ok to disagree with Alan.
I thought Murray's performance was strong and believable. That his character never comes across as "a movie star" in the film worked perfectly for me. Bob Harris is 20-25 years past his prime, and this character makes no illusion of how bored he seems to be with it all, yet he's in for the long haul, so the bed is made (years ago), and he lies in it. Never once did I feel "sucked in" to Bob Harris because of his listlessness. I loved the scene at the end when the attractive American woman recognized him and wanted to say hello, and his attention span with her was maybe 2-3 seconds. It’s one of many moments in the film where I found his character so convincingly believable. The same applies to Johansson’s performance. The sad, empty expression on her face in so many of the scenes said it all for me " a life undefined up to that moment, a marriage going nowhere, a lost soul. I can relate to that so well that believing in her took no effort. I often found that when she smiled in the film, it required an enormous effort on her part, a true sign of feeling knotted up inside and not at peace with herself. One of the gifts of the film is that there is real chemistry between these two actors, and it almost bleeds on the screen.
Alan, please forgive me, but I'm bone weary of reading reviews that suggest it's critical or necessary to compare (or even be aware of) a past performance of similar merit in order to appreciate (or not) the performance at hand. Bill Murray’s performance in Groundhog Day is, to me, irrelevant, a non-issue. I don’t need to know about what he did there to appreciate what he does here, and frankly, I don’t care.
The criticism of the depiction of the Japanese characters doesn’t wash with me. I was not offended or put off by what I saw, nor did the behaviour of the locals in, say, the hotel, feel odd, or even feel to me like their presence had any impact on the movie other than helping to set the location and the feeling " far away from anything familiar, alone, and lonely. How can I not expect locals in Tokyo to speak broken English? Harris’s red carpet treatment by the hotel staff also worked for me " I mean, this guy’s being paid $2 million to hawk whiskey; I wouldn’t doubt that those paying him would tell the hotel staff to treat him like a god. That he seems bored and at times bothered by their collective attention made sense " he’s way past his prime, and experiences like this one have lost their meaning for him, if they ever had any.
Regarding the Japanese humour, I’ll agree that the scene with the woman sent to Murray’s hotel room was presented poorly, and made little sense. I found it annoying and distracting, a waste of time. Beyond that, I had no problems with what I saw, including the whacked out, kinetic Japanese talk show. If anything, the talk show sequence illustrated how far off the map Bob Harris was from pop culture reality at that moment in his declining career, and to what lengths he might still be willing to go to satisfy his sponsors, agents, etc.
Alan, begging your indulgence, but I have no idea what you are trying to tell us with these words: “The best I'll give her is that she uses the characters' discomfort abroad as a symbol for their malaise. All the same, this symbolic system can be irritating because underneath it's humorlessly unself-aware.” I mean, I have two university degrees, I’m not THAT stoopid, yet reading those words makes me feel like I was staring into the eyes of a chicken.
What’s interesting to me is statements like, “4) the shift in tone between the Japanese jokes and the quiet bond b/w Charlotte and Bob is jarring to me.” My response to that is, “said shift in tone wasn’t jarring to me.” I mean, that’s it, right? I don’t know why it wasn’t jarring or disturbing or offensive, but, well, it wasn’t. It worked for me.
I can’t remember reading such a well-crafted and thoughtful review that at the same time seemed so vitriolic. Did I completely miss something here? The characters portrayed by Johansson and Murray are perhaps the two most real people I’ve seen on screen all year. I had not a shred of difficulty believing in them, and I adored the way Sofia Coppola took her time presenting them to us with a slow buildup, until they finally connect in the bar in the hotel. In addition, the sound and music in this film is absolutely haunting at times. I’ve seen 69 movies this year, and this is easily one of the best, certainly one of the most enjoyable and rewarding. Well, for me, anyway.
There’s more I’d like to say, but frankly, I’m overwhelmed by this review. I’ve submitted a smattering of small reviews to Blogcritics.com, and I know Alan’s contributions are of major league caliber. I doubt my so-called “reviews” would qualify for the minor leagues. I almost feel that by daring to disagree, I’m being insubordinate to a superior officer. I’m pretty much just a lunch-bucket schmuck who enjoys his pop culture in regular doses. I’m afraid that by admitting I actually like this movie, and that I like it a lot, I could get spanked and sent to bed without my supper.
8 - rena ancona
Thanks for such a thoughtful, learned and useful review. My partner and I felt insulted by the superficiality of the direction and the ignorance of film language displayed in this adolescent self absorbed film. I read somewhere that she had the last word in the final cut. Would an experienced editor have allowed scenes after scenes of utter vapidity? But why the nearly universal blindness of a majority of critics???
9 - Alan Dale
Thanks for writing. My hunch is that the critics are praising the movie by association to Sofia's father. They're hoping for another era like the '70s, a breakthrough moment in American movies. They're hallucinating genius. It's good to know I'm not the only one who wasn't impressed, esp. during the awards season when this dud is being showered with prizes.
10 - Jim Carruthers
I enjoyed "Lost In Translation", but obviously your milage may vary. It was a modestly budgeted movie about a couple of people in a foreign place over a couple of days.
I do have a couple of comments where I think you are flat out wrong.
The movie captured perfectly the experience of a North American in Tokyo. I spent nearly a week there a couple of years ago, and it was exactly like the experience in the film.
Tokyo is familiar enough to constantly keep you off balance, smacking you with strangeness, lost in translation, so to speak.
Many Japanese take English courses taught by people who don't speak English, with the result being many Japanese think they speak English, but they don't. Also gaijin are seen as an opportunity to practise their English.
There are no street signs or building numbers, and few streets which run in a straight line. You spend the entire time feeling lost. I remember seeing a district map outside a subway station which had a red light and an arrow saying "You Are Here", the rest of the map was in kanji.
Japanese teevee really is that weird. I can't provide any experience of the call-girls, but given hentai, the scene seems plausible. And I'm guessing you don't kareoke much.
So why, if the scenes about the foreignness of Tokyo are realistic, is this wrong?
As for the disappointment with the quality of the yuks, again, I'm puzzled, since I didn't see "Lost In Translation" as a comedy.
As for Coppola family connections, have you looked at Francis Ford Coppola's track record (he's bankrupted his studio), he's produced mostly mediocre crap, which has done poorly at the box office (the real measure of success in Hollywood) and his two greatest movies "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now" where both considered to be disasters during production (see "Hearts of Darkness"). If anything, Coppola's name would be a deterrent to entering the film business.
Also if you want to draw a comparison to another Bill Murray character, Herman Blume in "Rushmore" is closer to Bob Harris than Phil Connors.