***Official LOST IN TRANSLATION Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Derek Miner]

Just a note to those who are thinking about buying the soundtrack, but are on the fence...

I'm sure the soundtrack is good in its own way, but I want the renditions of "(What's So Funny Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" and "Brass In Pocket"

BTW, if you look up the vinyl version of the soundtrack album, you'll notice the cover is the same as the first shot in the film...

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

I daresay that anyone disappointed with this film, aside from having absolute right to that opinion, is disturbed by its gentle tiptoe between the love and comedy genres and refusal to provide that satisfaction of doling out either one or the other in a more conventional format."

You seem to assume a lot of things about people who you don’t know and who disagrees with your opinion of a particular film by even taking it a step further and making such characterizations and generalizations. Why can’t you just respectfully agree to disagree?

If there is someone that is wrong, it is you for making the above assessment.

~Edwin

 

[Gui A]

Honestly, I wouldn't do the soundtrack review justice, as I had never heard of Kevin Shields/ My Bloody Valentine up until now. But I did like what I heard.

The whole feel to it is very soft. Relaxing. Air-like, almost.
I think of most songs on it as music to sit by and talk to with someone special, while drinking whiskey.

I do wish they had included the song from the "dance lesson", by Peaches; though I'm not sure it would have flowed well with the other songs

Anyway, I was able to find the translation of the director through google:


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/fashion/21LOST.html
September 21, 2003

What Else Was Lost In Translation

By MOTOKO RICH

It doesn't take much to figure out that "Lost in Translation," the title of Sofia Coppola's elegiac new film about two lonely American souls in Tokyo, means more than one thing. There is the cultural dislocation felt by Bob Harris (Bill Murray), a washed-up movie actor, and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a young wife trying to find herself. They are also lost in their marriages, lost in their lives. Then, of course, there is the simple matter of language.

Bob, who is in town to make a whiskey commercial, doesn't speak Japanese. His director (Yutaka Tadokoro), a histrionic Japanese hipster, doesn't speak English. In one scene, Bob goes on the set and tries to understand the director through a demure interpreter (Akiko Takeshita), who is either unable or (more likely) unwilling to translate everything the director is rattling on about.

Needless to say, Bob is lost. And without subtitles, so is the audience. Here, translated into English, is what the fulmination is really about.

DIRECTOR (in Japanese to the interpreter): The translation is very important, O.K.? The translation.

INTERPRETER: Yes, of course. I understand.

DIRECTOR: Mr. Bob-san. You are sitting quietly in your study. And then there is a bottle of Suntory whiskey on top of the table. You understand, right? With wholehearted feeling, slowly, look at the camera, tenderly, and as if you are meeting old friends, say the words. As if you are Bogie in "Casablanca," saying, "Cheers to you guys," Suntory time!

INTERPRETER: He wants you to turn, look in camera. O.K.?

BOB: That's all he said?

INTERPRETER: Yes, turn to camera.

BOB: Does he want me to, to turn from the right or turn from the left?

INTERPRETER (in very formal Japanese to the director): He has prepared and is ready. And he wants to know, when the camera rolls, would you prefer that he turn to the left, or would you prefer that he turn to the right? And that is the kind of thing he would like to know, if you don't mind.

DIRECTOR (very brusquely, and in much more colloquial Japanese): Either way is fine. That kind of thing doesn't matter. We don't have time, Bob-san, O.K.? You need to hurry. Raise the tension. Look at the camera. Slowly, with passion. It's passion that we want. Do you understand?

INTERPRETER (In English, to Bob): Right side. And, uh, with intensity.

BOB: Is that everything? It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that.

DIRECTOR: What you are talking about is not just whiskey, you know. Do you understand? It's like you are meeting old friends. Softly, tenderly. Gently. Let your feelings boil up. Tension is important! Don't forget.

INTERPRETER (in English, to Bob): Like an old friend, and into the camera.

BOB: O.K.

DIRECTOR: You understand? You love whiskey. It's Suntory time! O.K.?

BOB: O.K.

DIRECTOR: O.K.? O.K., let's roll. Start.

BOB: For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.

DIRECTOR: Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut! (Then in a very male form of Japanese, like a father speaking to a wayward child) Don't try to fool me. Don't pretend you don't understand. Do you even understand what we are trying to do? Suntory is very exclusive. The sound of the words is important. It's an expensive drink. This is No. 1. Now do it again, and you have to feel that this is exclusive. O.K.? This is not an everyday whiskey you know.

INTERPRETER: Could you do it slower and ——

DIRECTOR: With more ecstatic emotion.

INTERPRETER: More intensity.

DIRECTOR (in English): Suntory time! Roll.

BOB: For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.

DIRECTOR: Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut! God, I'm begging you.


In an interview, Ms. Coppola said she wrote the dialogue for the scene in English, and then it was translated into Japanese for Mr. Tadokoro. The scene, she said, came out of her own experience promoting her first feature film, "The Virgin Suicides," in Japan. Whenever she would say something, she said, the interpreter would seemingly speak for much longer. "I would think that she was adding to what I was saying and getting carried away, so I wanted to have that in the scene."

In the scene, Ms. Coppola said, Mr. Murray never did learn what the director was saying. "I like the fact that the American actors don't really know what's going on, just like the characters," she said.

Frankly, it's not clear that even if Bob-san had understood what the director said, it would have helped.

Ms. Coppola said she purposely gave the director "lame directions," adding, "He wasn't supposed to be the best director."

 

[Michael Boyd]

btw, what were those bar owners shooting at them with? some kind of pellet or bb gun? i want one of those!

Ted, I came in here to find out the exact same thing! Anyone know? Was it just a pellet gun with some kind of effect for the movie? Or is it some normal crazy thing that goes on in Japanese bars?

Great picture by the way. one of my favorites this year.

 

[JonZ]

:star: :star: :star: out of 4

Bill Murray was great(my favorite perfomance from him is still Scrooged - the scene when he visits his parents house in the past)

Scarlett moved up on my fav actress list a few notches.

LOVED the Japanese scenery - it was gorgeous.

 

[ChrisMatson]

I saw this over the weekend and was blown away by the subtle, honest, and believable emotions conveyed by Murray and Johansson. I agree that the private moment they shared at the end was perfect.

As for the gun scene in the bar, I got the feeling that it was just a toy that didn't actually shoot any projectiles. Bob and Charlotte seemed to be the only people running scared.

 

[Matthew Brown]

I was pleasently surprised by this movie. It reminded me of a Wong Kar Wai movie between the cinematography, music and pace. I have to watch this again. I know somebody had mentioned In The Mood For Love earlier in this thread and they are dead on. I also thought of Chungking Express more than once.

Matt

 

[Adam_S]

although many have mentioned Wong Kar Wai, I must admit I thought of Korean films, especially "Failan"--another quiet character study with a stunning ending--as well.

Wonderful film, and I think you can look at that final conversation any way you wish, depending on your perceptions of the characters. Personally I like to think that he told her a lot of things but also that he was going home to forget acting and rededicate his life around his familiy, spending time with his daughter and sons, in the hopes that she might someday turn out like Charlotte. :p But that's just sappy ole me. Charlotte I think has new direction in her life thanks to the confidence and support of a friend, and after tying her bad fortune off has only good things to come.

Wonderful cinematography, anyone else love the underwater tracking shot of Bob swimming, so many little things that they got just right so you don't even notice them.

 

[Al Stuart]

"I have to leave, but I don't want to."

"Then stay here... With me. We'll start a jazz band."


While I was watching Lost in Translation, I was often restless and fidgety, but not in an impatient way. I had the feeling that I had during certain parts of Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming where the characters despair of not knowing what to with their lives. As Chris Eigeman said in that movie, as a recent college graduate who realizes that once you finish school, you suddenly transform from a scholar on the brink of reaching your full potential, to an aimless loser adding yourself to the end of the unemployment line, "I wish I was just retiring. Like I worked for 50 years, and I was coming home after a lifetime of accomplishment."

That aimless feeling is in every scene in Lost in Translation, where Scarlett Johanasson doesn't know why she is where she is in life, and would hate to spend the rest of her time as a traveling wife to a successful photographer. Personally, I could understand her plight even more than Murray, who is stuck in Japan as a semi-washed up actor picking up a huge paycheck for a whiskey ad. The scenes with him attempting to fulfill the director's wishes in the different ways to hold the whiskey glass to the looks he gives to the photographer trying to get him to act out other famous actor's poses are genius, but more for the ways that Murray doesn't do his expected routine, and uses the opportunity to express his gentle acceptance of his loss of control of his own life. He would express embarassment to the multitude of people around him, if only he thought they might understand what he was trying to say.

There's also a bit of John Boorman's "Hell in the Pacific," where Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune are stuck on an island by themselves during WWII and neither know each other's language. Boorman chose not to subtitle Mifune as he spoke Japanese to recreate for the audience the confusion that Marvin was going through. Murray has the same issue in Lost in Translation, as there are many scenes where he is forced to nod and smile, at first attempting to make an effort to understand what is being said through gestures or translators, and then as frustration sets in, trying to make a joke of it, to eventually not even bothering. Of course, this is a none-too-subtle analogy for how lost he is in his home life, where he seems not needed by a wife and kids who have learned to live without him, but somehow want to continue to pretend that they are a traditional family.

Basically each scene is a variation on itself, where Murray and Johansson give longing looks at each other, but not sexual looks, more of an understanding that they are in completely different points in their lives, but in the same points in their cycle of repetition. There's little of actual importance that is expressed verbally, but this is one of the only movies I've ever seen, that doesn't feel the need to have characters spout constantly witty dialogue to successfully establish a close bond between people. It has an odd realism in that fact because often, in real life, it's more the mutual experience that draws people together, and it doesn't have to be a series of monumental events, rather than some profound insight that they find in one another.

There's a scene in a strip club that is the only reason the film got an R rating, and even though it doesn't have any purpose on the movie, and results in a nice, but easy joke, I think if it had been cut it would have lost the casual dreaminess that is the mood of each scene.

An odd concidence is that this is the second terrific movie that I've seen this year, that for some reason had Ana Faris in it, the lead from Scary Movie. She's also in May, which is easily the best horror movie released this year, despite the schlocky DVD cover which makes it look mighty derivative.

 

[Lew Crippen]

My wife and I saw this movie yesterday and while I enjoyed the film, I was moderately disappointed. On the positive side, I thought that it captured very well foreigners in Japan—no false notes as has been already mentioned in this thread. And while I loved the side trip to Kyoto, I thought in the end that it sidetracked both the plot and the film.

As a firm lover of Wong Kar-Wai’s films and of In the Mood for Love in particular, I think that this film is a very long way from Wong’s masterpiece(s). One of the problems for me in this film, is that I did not feel real strong, on-screen chemistry between the potential lovers. Perhaps this was a result of each going for too many easy laughs, something that often (not always) seemed disjointed and relieved any sexual tension that might have been built up. Herein is I think a real problem. Often humor is used to relive dramatic tension, but which also really adds to an increase in the film, as the tension begins to build again, but from a higher point than the last time. Further, when done well, humor also increases the sexual tension itself, but in this film too often the humor was separate from the drama (a notable exception to this was the chase in the night-on-the-town—I thought that this worked very well).

On balance, a good film and worth seeing, but hardly one of the best of the year and a very long way from comparisons to films like Chungking Express.

 

[RyanPC]

WOW, after reading Scott's review I really want to see this now. Actually, I am torn between wanting to see both this and Kill Bill. Maybe I will be able to see both...

I love Bill Murray. As Scott mentioned in his review, he is a damned good actor. I loved him in Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, and yes, even Space Jam. He's probably the funniest comedian living today, so it's no wonder I really want to see his new picture. The film just sounds wonderful and (along with Kill Bill) one of my most anticipated films. I can't wait. :b

 

[Ted Lee]

Perhaps this was a result of each going for too many easy laughs, something that often (not always) seemed disjointed and relieved any sexual tension that might have been built up.

funny...i thought the exact opposite. besides a couple of one-liners, i didn't think the movie went for any easy laughs. there were several scenes where i was cringing (in a good way); for example the scene where the director is trying to tell murray what to do. but i didn't consider it a throwaway laugh scene.

isn't it weird how people can see the same thing and interpret it differently. pretty interesting....

 

[Arman]

"quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps this was a result of each going for too many easy laughs, something that often (not always) seemed disjointed and relieved any sexual tension that might have been built up.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

funny...i thought the exact opposite. besides a couple of one-liners, i didn't think the movie went for any easy laughs. there were several scenes where i was cringing (in a good way); for example the scene where the director is trying to tell murray what to do. but i didn't consider it a throwaway laugh scene.

isn't it weird how people can see the same thing and interpret it differently. pretty interesting...."

It is really weird Ted because I felt the exact thing like you do. I am very very surprise (and disappointed) with some of Lew's comments and reaction to this film. Anyway, oh well, ... now I completely understand why few people ...

 

[Adam_S]

Like Arman, I'm somewhat surprised by Lew's comments. One of the things I loved about the film was the deliberate lack of sexual tension. Lost in Translation never struck me as an unrequited love story, but as a story about the power of friendship--it's necessity to a healthy and happy existence. I never really believed that either Bob or Charlotte were in bad marraiges, just that these two individuals were going through difficult times of transistion in their lives and happen to be separated from their spouses and the support such would normally provide in a marraige. They aren't looking for a new love (though Bob gets drunk and cheats on his wife so that the audience has a comparative relationship to his relationship with Charlotte so there is no mistake whatsoever that their relationship isn't sexual)
of eros, but an unfilled need for philia (friendship) in their lives.

Adam

 

[Lew Crippen]

It looks as though I need to explain my views of this film a bit more.



To begin, I’ll comment on my views as to the lack of sexual tension between the protagonists and why I think that this is a defect. The comparisons of this film to those of Wong Kar-Wai is one of the reasons that I took this slant in my brief comments. In both In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express, the sexual tension is one of the major drivers of the story. In fact unresolved sexual tension in In the Mood for Love is the point—no way do we consider these protagonists just ‘friends’. Their longing for each other is clear and, for me, the film would fail if Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung could not make us believe in their repressed passion (regardless of their real sexual orientation).

But even if one does not compare Lost in Translation to Wong’s films, I feel that the lack of sexual chemistry is a major problem. With respect to Ted, Adam, Arman and the rest of the majority (and I’m sure that you are all aligned with the critics as well), let me explain why I consider this a very big defect.

The one-night stand that Murray’s character has with the lounge singer only makes sense if you accept that he is releasing the built-up sexual feelings that he has for Charlotte; otherwise he is just another sleazy husband, taking an opportunity to cheat on his wife (whom he clearly loves).

And Charlotte’s reaction only makes sense similarly.

Therefore, I find the film fundamentally flawed.

Even so, I can see other views—indeed I think Arman’s comments are well chosen and accurate. We just put a different emphasis on strengths and weaknesses of the film. I love the images, the sense of isolation and much of the humor. But, for me, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

 

[Ted Lee]

It looks as though I need to explain my views of this film a bit more.

nah...just different strokes for different folks.

btw - with everyone mentioning "in the mood for love", i've added that to my netflix queue...i'm looking forward to it. (i've already seen "chungking express" a couple of times.)

 

[Matthew Brown]

Lew -
I understand your point of view. I felt that Murray's character may have not wanted to corrupt Charlotte. His path has already been chosen while hers doesn't have to be the same.

I get the feeling that Murray is like a "cool teacher" to Charlette's "infatuated student". Infatuated is a strong word but I can't think of a similar one. Maybe it's the age difference between the characters that makes me feel this way. It's a very different reaction then seeing somebody like Woody Allen with a much younger woman.

Matt

 

[Kevin Porter]

Wow. I never wanted it to end.

The characters really do live and breathe beyond the film. The struggles they face with the points in their lives is something oh so real.

The first comment my friend made when we got out of the theater is that it was the most original movie he'd ever seen. Truly. There ain't no PLOT POINT A, B, Climax and C here folks. It just flows like honey. And when you get to the bottom of the jar, you'll find yourself wanting just one more taste.

One of minor quibbles is the scene in which Bob is trying understand the director. It just felt too...something. I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

The humor in the film is not really that original. It seems like something you might see and find funny. The movie was so real to me. I did, however, miss about the first 3 minutes (I came in on the part in which Bob is reading a letter from his wife). I missed the much talked about opening shot.

And could Charlotte get any cuter? GA! And yes, I did realize the comparison that could be made to a Woody Allen flick, though there was never that feeling throughout the movie. If I were a member, this would have my vote for Best Picture of the year (In Academy terms. I hold that position for Kill Bill: Volume 1). I'm so tired of epics like "Master and Commander" that just scream "GIVE ME THE OSCAR! I'M AN EPIC WITH RUSSEL CROWE!".

 

[AdeleW]

I too must say that when I saw this movie - it was an amazing experience. I have never walked out of a movie and felt the way I did. I had so many questions - not only about the movie but ( imagine this ) myself! I have found myself just walking around shopping or whatever and then for some reason I think on a scene and imagine "what did that mean exactly?" or " wow I know exactly how she/he feels" etc...

Its been a long time since I went to a movie that made me think.

I LOVED Murrays performance ( if anyone hasn't seen him in "The Razors Edge" you may want to see that too ) and i think he deserves some recognition - and a good amount of it. It would be nice to be surprised at the Oscars this year ya know?

Scarlett also did very well - she has a lot of good things ahead for her.

The soundtrack is great too its haunting but soothing all at once.



:star: :star: :star: :star:

 

[Ruslan]

This just previewed in Australia this weekend and I need to talk about it!
What an amazing film! The only off-note was Bob on the exercise machine (a bit too slapstick and OTT)
I can't get the film out of my head...a beautiful, amazing experience. One of my favourite films EVER. I really hope it gets some Oscars (Best Original Screenplay?)
It will now be my mission to get everyone I know to go and see it!
This is why movies are great!