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2-D SAMSARA Lost in Ovations
By Hannah Dallman
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| THIS COMING SUNDAY, Sophia Coppola's Lost in Translation will be up for several Academy Awards, and while it doesn’t have the blockbuster appeal of “Lord of the Rings,” it does have a quiet intelligence and an intensely human scenario that left this reviewer aching for more. Bill Murray and Scarlet Johanssen are two lonesome souls who find themselves drifting around the opulent and chicly minimalist Tokyo Park Hyatt at odd hours of the night, both of them victims of extreme jet lag. The film opens with a long take of Johansson’s rear clad in pink cotton, and ends with a whisper between her and Murray that we aren’t allowed to hear, while exploring all the intimacies throughout. Murray plays Bob Harris, an aging movie start who has long since abandoned his acting ideals. He is in Tokyo doing an ad campaign to pick up a quick $2 mil and to take a break from his distant and nagging wife, who we hear from via faxes that remind Bill of his paternal inadequacies. Their trans-Pacific phone calls -- with a 5-second delay -- echo the emotional distance between them. While at the bar one evening, he meets Charlotte (Johanssen), three decades his junior. She is in Tokyo with her workaholic husband John (Giovanni Ribisi), a fashion photographer who has long since stopped listening to her intellectual meanderings, and has taken a disconcerting interest in an air-headed movie star (Anna Faris) in town to promote her new action movie, a junket which seems limited to vapid professions of her love for yoga and karate. “I’m organizing a prison break,” Bob tells Charlotte, and from there the mismatched couple escape the austere loneliness of the hotel to explore the fantastical Tokyo entertainment district, sharing vague intimacies about their lackluster marriages and existential wanderings. While all the ingredients for a classical Hollywood May-December romance appear to be in place, writer and director Sophia Coppola is too thoughtful and honest to let the two characters jump into bed and solve the audience’s curiosities in that way. Instead, the film captures and lingers on that impermanent moment of falling for someone you’ll never see again, in a place you’ll never be again. Murray is a knock-out as Bob Harris, whom he gives a gentle-hearted core without sacrificing Murray’s trademark for subtle, vicious humor. Watching Bob navigate the situation’s many imperfect translations, including the zealous commercial director and the hotel’s overwhelmingly mechanized environment, in an almost embarrassed manner suits Coppola’s vision to a tee. Johansson also gives a wonderful performance, gracing her particular demographic with depth and a mellow sexiness rarely seen in other contemporary ingénues. Director of Photography Lance Acord’s images of Tokyo are breathtaking. The pulsating lights of Tokyo, the dizzying views from Charlotte’s hotel window, and the chaotic streets and shops of the entertainment district all lend themselves perfectly to the sleek style in which they were shot, giving the film the exotic aura of an indescribable something just out of reach. Also worthy of mention is Brian Reitzell, whose combination of musical supervision and original scores are achingly hip and endearing at the same time, imparting an oxymoronic sense of immediate nostalgia [and let’s not forget the re-emergence of My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields! –ed.]. In short, I loved this film. I loved the flawed, sincere characters, the grace and love with which Tokyo was shot, and the quiet hum of the brief near-romantic encounter which carries you through a lifetime. It is the sort of film that inspires multiple viewings and obsessive soundtrack listening, and it lingers in the mind like the evanescent moment it set out to capture. |
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| Hannah Dallman, wife of Manifest editorial advisor Matthew Dallman, is a graduate film student at Columbia College Chicago and seems to know a lot about sushi (judging from her last visit to Boulder). This is her first review for The Manifest. |
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