Released twenty years ago this month, Lost in Translation<\/em> now feels like both the start of many things and a capsule of its time. It was the beginning of Scarlett Johansson\u2019s ascension to stardom; now the Marvel player is mostly acting against green screens. It was the apex of the more serious stage of Bill Murray\u2019s career, for which he received his first, and only, Oscar nomination. And it was one of the first major hits for fledgling production company Focus Features, earning $118 million at the box office on a $4 million budget. Such a word-of-mouth success was a rarity back then; it feels almost unheard of now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The film is also, as the kids say these days, \u201ca vibe.\u201d After the opening credits, we see Bob (Murray), a washed-up actor in Tokyo to film a whiskey commercial, waking up in a cab driving through downtown. It\u2019s nighttime but the neon lights of the buildings and flashing advertisements illuminate the city like day, and this dreamlike state is heightened when Bob sees his own face on a passing billboard. He\u2019s greeted like a star but we\u2019ll soon learn that he\u2019s desperately lonely, increasingly at odds with his passive-aggressive wife back home, and isolated in a place where he doesn\u2019t know the language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Charlotte (Johansson) is feeling adrift, too. She\u2019s in Tokyo with her new(ish) husband John (played with stuttery self-regard by Giovanni Ribisi) who is constantly on his way out the door to work on a shoot. A recent Yale graduate, she is struggling to figure out what she wants to do with her life, reacting to those who seem to have a better grasp of themselves with a knee-jerk disdain. She and Bob, both unable to sleep, will soon cross paths in the hotel bar with its panoramic glass windows and the same cheesy band playing every night. Despite their age difference, a connection will form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where were you at twenty-seven? If you\u2019re Sofia Coppola, you were directing your first feature, The Virgin Suicides<\/em>. It was during the press tour for that film that she began conceiving the plot for Lost in Translation<\/em> during a stay at the Tokyo Park Hyatt. She\u2019d had many experiences in the city before, traveling there often after she dropped out of college and was trying on different careers and suffering what she called a \u201ckind of crisis,\u201d traits she shares with her protagonist Charlotte. She latched onto the idea of two characters experiencing a \u201cromantic melancholy\u201d and the story blossomed from there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It must be said that the film has aged poorly in some ways, particularly the comedic intent of the interactions Bob has with his Japanese hosts and colleagues. Contemporary audiences will rightly cringe at the jokes about mispronunciations and the hyperactivity of the culture. Coppola\u2019s camera often films Tokyo at a remove from her characters; it has a sweeping beauty but it\u2019s also overwhelming. A generous interpretation would say that it\u2019s all in service of the film\u2019s main theme of alienation taken to an extreme. Regardless, it can make Lost in Translation<\/em> an uncomfortable sit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then again, maybe it was always meant to be. All of Coppola\u2019s films are about privilege to some extent, whether that of a group of neighborhood boys obsessed with the untouchable girls<\/a> across the street, or a Civil War-era soldier, or literal royalty<\/a>. The bond that Bob and Charlotte form during their hazy week together is a privilege, too, albeit an emotional rather than a material one. But they are both technically attached to others. Murray and Johansson have a surprisingly authentic chemistry; their sardonic rapport builds to a gentle intimacy that dances around consummation but never succumbs to it. They know their time with one another is short. Viewers see but don\u2019t hear their goodbye as Bob embraces Charlotte on the street and whispers in her ear (Murray, ever the prankster, apparently delivered something different in each take.) It\u2019s a graceful ending for Coppola to grant her characters. The words don\u2019t matter; it\u2019s having the chance to say them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Where are you at thirty-seven? Life hasn\u2019t quite turned out the way you assumed it would when you were younger. You haven\u2019t figured everything out yet, and you\u2019re creeping closer in age to Bob than Charlotte. But you know it\u2019s possible to feel just as alone in a crowded room as a bed with the wrong person in it. You know love is a package that might not look like what you expected; sometimes it\u2019s a package that comes late, or not at all. You have a Pavlovian nostalgic response to the opening drum kick of \u201cJust Like Honey.\u201d And you know some things are the same in any language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Lost in Translation” is streaming on Netflix<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/lost-in-translation2-1024x462.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
With hindsight, it\u2019s clear just how much of her personal life Coppola was investing in her second film. The tensions in Charlotte\u2019s relationship with John have direct parallels with Coppola\u2019s own marriage at the time to fellow director Spike Jonze. And Anna Faris is rumored to have based her performance as a ditzy bottle-blonde film star on Cameron Diaz, who starred in Jonze\u2019s debut Being John Malkovich<\/em> four years prior. All filmmakers adapt from their own experiences, but Coppola worried that her script was too \u201cindulgent,\u201d despite only running seventy-five pages. Were she just starting out her career now, she\u2019d likely be dogged by complaints of nepotism, but maybe critics at the time were just relieved she wasn\u2019t in front of the camera again<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n