Lost in translation

In the typical Hollywood movie, the characters have no real backstory. They might have an explanatory episode (the reason they hate their antagonist), they might even have a family (people to leave behind in a romcom or have the antagonist kill/torture/kidnap in a thriller).

But Coppola never allows Bob and Charlotte's backstory to let them go. She takes the cliched strangers meet romance and gives it a ferocious twist (many twists, I should say--among the best the spin on the old man meets young girl sexual thing, where, say, Connery meets Zeta Jones and she is wowed by his sexual magnetism. In this film, Bill Murray is playing the Sean Connery guy, but certainly doesn't sexually magnetise).

The girl clinging to the threads of her marriage (too young and to the wrong guy) and the older guy who has taken too many wrong paths, made too many wrong choices, and is now lost without a chance of coming back meet and, if we followed the usual script, get together and run off into the sunset. But Murray's character cannot forget his obligations, the deep and abiding love for his kids (and the weary thing that might still be love for his wife), even though he is tempted by the chance to recapture his youth, his vitality.

It rings a bell with married men with kids. We knew what we were giving up when we made the choices we made, and still we made them, but that doesn't mean we never have regrets (not regrets, really, but, how could you put it, wistfulnesses). Sometimes, those regrets blow into a midlife crisis (as, I think, American beauty, though flawed, showed pretty well). But in Lost in translation they're just wishes in the wind, as they are IRL for us. We would never leave what we love, and neither does Bob Harris. He never really considers it.

This is what makes this such a great film (along with the excellent, literate script, the wonderful acting - particularly from Bill Murray, who does the man bemused by capricious fate to a T, and Anna Faris, hilarious as the starlet Charlotte's husband should have married, the use of the Tokyo's relentless urbanness as backdrop, the leftfield music (who would have believed My Bloody Valentine would ever backdrop a tender scene in a romcom, and fit), and above all, the tangible chemistry between Murray and Johansson). It speaks to your heart. The awkward tenderness between the leads is what we have in our real lives, if we are lucky. We don't get fireworks, the choir singing, fuck it, let's leave our lives behind. We get moments to cherish, smiles and fumbled kisses.

If I made films, I would wish to have made one like this. I can't think of a higher compliment for a movie, because ultimately taste is personal, and if a film epitomises your taste, well...

posted by Dr Zen @ 9:29 pm