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Lost in Translation
Lost in Translation features Bill Murray, one of the few original Saturday Night Live characters to become a superstar. He joins SNL cohorts Dan Akroyd (Ghostbusters) , Chevy Chase (Vegas Vacation and other National Lampoon movies fame), and of course there's megastar Eddie Murphy (Raw, Coming to America, Beverly Hills Cop). Despite such overwhelming previous successes (Ground Hog Day, What about Bob, Ghostbusters I & II), in Lost in Translation, Bill Murry seems to evoke an aura bordering on disaffected, if not bored. Glimpses of reality thankfully prevail, like tiny bits of sushi seen through the blades of a whirring fan. Unfortunately we see virtually none of the endearing qualities that made Bill Murray a household name. Tokyo has grown since I last saw it about five years ago. Even the bullet train has changed into a newer, sleeker, more aerodynamic shape. Electronic billboards on the Ginza have grown elephantine, with massive high-definition screens extolling the virtues of products of all kinds along the sides of buildings on the Ginza. If there was ever a more eclectic mass consumer society, it is Japan. An electric rice (lice) steamer and kara terebi (Color Television) in every household. In some aspects, living or being there is like being inside of a video game, some parts incredibly real, although we know, like looking at some realistic, computer-generated creature, that it couldn't be real. Yet, somehow it is. And don't forget the stereo. And karaoke... If it weren't for the avid desire of the Japanese to cram these creature comforts into every labbit hutch, world civilization would be the worse for it. A world without Play Station, Nintendo, Yugi-Oh! Pokeman and Pac-Man, is now as incomprehensible as it was inconceivable only a few short decades ago. Even Alvin Toffler in Future Shock, as outlandish as it was for its time, failed to predict the future we have today. He came close, but as they say "No cigar." The real shokku, is in the impacts of Japanese language and culture. It's more than just fun and games. Sony broadcast cameras, and in the myriad of technological innovations, many U.S. financed or licensed, that have transformed our American way of life. We literally see the world through the lenses and cameras the Japanese have created. Anime and Manga have introduced us to troubling aspects of the Japanese mind, while delighting us all the same. In the movie, I caught a glimpse of the world's most prosperous MacDonald's, the very first one on the Ginza. I had my first Big Mac there when this, the first MacDonald's in Japan opened in 1973. It was a four-hour wait, but well worth it. Come to think of it, the first Kentucky Fried Chicken I ever went to was in Japan as well. All that Japanese sense of psychotic perfection, even in fast food. I have never since encountered quite that exquisite taste back here in America. Storyline: Married boy and married girl meet in Tokyo. An American married couple - not married to each other - meet and discuss aspirations in between flirtatious sessions, and sharing the same bed fully clothed. Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johannsen) are the perfect mismatched couple, each in an unfulfilling relationship. She a newlywed, graduate of Yale, degree in philosophy, not knowing what she wants to do or get out of life. He, in midlife crisis. Did you get your Porsche yet? She coos, inquisitively. Not yet, yet he replies, mysteriously, playfully. He, an incredibly bored - or so it seems middle-ager - spectre of the creme-de-creme of the baby boom generation that happened to overachieve and get everything - or despite the effort - get and lose everything like the rest of us ex-tekkies and dotcommers, doomed to work the rest of our lives without respite. He getting two million dollars to star in a Japanese Suntory Whiskey TV ad campaign. By the way, Sammy Davis Jr. was the first round-eye American to open the way for other actors black and white to appear in Japanese commercials. He got far more in the 70's - a huge undisclosed sum - than any other foreign or domestic actor. Ironically many awards were won domestically for his jazzy, tap-dancing endorsement of Suntory Scotch, the same scotch toasted so unenthusiastically by Murray's character. In a way, in a weird sort of way, perhaps poetic justic, a black man paved the way for white foreign men and women to appear in Japanese commercials. Still you can't feel too sorry for the guy. After all, two million cool ones ain't bad for a couple of days of work.
In a nutshell, there are many things good about the movie.
Let's start with the good stuff. The classic Coppola largeness. Must run in the family. Great presence.. In fact, huge captivating, compelling presence everywhere, in everything. Up close and personal, up front in your face everywhere, from the middle-aged Japanese trollop sent by a Japanese business associate who says "rip my stockings" "Or was it 'lick my stockings?" to the full-screen view of Japan's No. 1 talk show host, fashionably, and obviously gay, if not exagerrated, flaming gay. All high camp, high effect. Nothing less to be expected of the daughter of the producer
who gave us the Godfather series and Apocolypse Now. Use a cruise missile when a bazooka will do. Just the way we Americans want it. Big, up front, in-your-face. Larger-than-life. Then the breath-taking views from this hotel in Tokyo - Or was it a Hollywood set? It sure looked real. If I recall it was a new area of the trendy Shinjuku, long-lauded as sub-Tokyo, or more correctly subculture-Tokyo, the place for the young, and simply wild and crazy. He winds up in bed with the lark-voiced, but over-the-hill redheaded lounge singer at the hotel bar. The next morning, stopping by Bob's hotel room, Charlotte is dismayed to hear singing from the shower. "I guess you're busy..." she pouts, and storms off. Then again, no serious romance had developed between the characters, both spoken for anyway. He had no compunctions on cheating with the lounge singer, but somehow avoided what might have been a memorable moment with someone he really wanted to hook up with. Why the singer was o.k., but Charlotte wasn't, was never clear, as most of the muddy waters of the film. There are a few uncomfortably overdone moments such as the flaming gay talk show host who gets all hot and bothered that his idol Bob Harris ("Hah-less") decided to postpone his return to appear on his show. Tokyo fades almost subliminally into the background with most of the scenes occuring at night in Tokyo hotspots. Johannsen's character Charlotte makes a brave attempt to understand both a new and different culture and her borderline marriage. A major saving grace is the compelling soundtrack, which more than makes up for other shortcomings. It literally carries the film. IN THE END, one wonders what the point really was. The story line was thinner than the shabu-shabu the pair had for lunch and hated. After all who - particularly a red-blooded American, wants to go to a restaurant where you not only have to cook your food, but you're boiling beef to boot! When you talk about Sukiyaki or Shabu Shabu being nothing but boiled beef, it becomes less appetizing. Particularly without catchup and fries. I guess you had to be there. Unfortunately gastronomic fare at this level wasn't the only insipid or flavor-lacking thing in this movie. It might have been more interesting had the characters been allowed to develop, or at least been allowed to have some sort of a deeper relationship with each other. Right or wrong... but right or wrong, there were no relationships between any of the characters to speak of. One can't help but sense the plastic veneer everywhere. of course the veneer part and parcel of the Tokyo fabric, a grand city - a microcosm of the west, with everything available in the west available in some form in some corner of Tokyo. Mixing in Japanese pop culture you get an interesting mish-mash that defies identification of the lines of demarcation between Eastern and Western cultures, together with the obscenely bizaare. It is as if some parts blended, others were jury-rigged together. This is also a city where 50's U.S. pop culture - bobby sox and saddle shoes and all - is still very much alive and well and danced to in Yoyogi Park every weekend. THE GREATEST FAILING of the movie in my opinion as one who learned the language to escape incompetent translators, is that the original premise was never developed. Except for a promising few minutes at the beginning, and a few sporadic moments here and there, the comedic opportunities of butchered translation were never exploited. This is unfortunate, as the extremely different language and logic structure of this enigmatic language affords a rich lexicon for the comic metaphor. The director of the Scotch Commercial, speaking through the inept, bumbling-but-effervescent female interpreter, exhorts Murray to treat the glass of non-alcoholic elixir as his 'best friend,' or more. The interpreter tells Murry to "Look at the camera. With intensity!" Even Murray senses something is amiss. The director has spent several minutes explaining what he wants, and the interpreter reduced this to several seconds. Murray's brief comments on the other hand, produce a torrent of verbiage that continues for well over a minute. It's hilarious, but with no subtitles. All of this is lost on the audience. Perhaps that was the only point, but it wasn't well made. INACCURACIES Lost in Translation is reminiscent of Shogun, which was massively popular in the West (the US mainly), yet a dismal box-office and television flop in Japan. You can't even find a single Shogun book, video or DVD anywhere in Tokyo's largest bookstores. Not even in the used bookstores and DVD stores. Yet the most animated disagreements I get into both in Japan and here regard the authenticity. I guess it's no more authentic than our own cowboy and indian westerns.
Shorter bed that he has to sleep diagonally across in one scene, yet somehow seems to have magically grown to accomodate him and johannsen later, but both fully clothed, never ever crossing the boundaries (or did they?). But never matter, it is the realm of poetic film license. The sliding shower head to accomodate the different sized americans is a cheap device one doesn't find much in Tokyo luxury hotels.
Lost in Translation, lost itself unnecessarily, and in the process, a potentially much larger audience. Some scenes are wrong, just plain out of sequence, such as Murry in bed with Johannsen (before the Murray in Bed with Johannsen fully clothed scene), when we know it was too early for that situation to have developed. This further compounds the film's sense of disjointedness. Again, the lack of subtitles further complicates, blocking the viewer's understanding. Luckily, understanding Japanese, I could appreciate most of the dialogue, which, was authentic, spoken by native speakers, unlike similar movies, where only the faces are Japanese. It is a story of missed comedic opportunity, and gradually thinning storyline, until in the end, like a pilot trying to coax his gas-starved, sputtering craft over a hill, the task seems overwhelming, and time long run out. The story line was actually thinner than those cuts of shabu-shabu Bob and Charlotte scoffed at over lunch. IN THE END, we are left hanging, not really understanding what really is to transpire between the two, what Japan would term "Forbidden Lovers." Which, might actually be what the film should be called if it is ever translated into Japanese for distribution there. Perhaps even more would get lost in translation. IT IS ARTY, ECCENTRIC, ECLECTIC, AND all that...but left much lacking... Movies.com gushes and fawns, "IT IS ALREADY BEING HAILED AS ONE OF THE 'BEST MOVIES
OF THE YEAR' Box Office Results, meanwhile, also on the site, are not soaring, showing a dismal $14 million in the film's 4th week, with a diminishing number of theatres screening the film, compared to say $52 million for "Once Upon A Time in Mexico," in its first week. True, the latter has serious blood and gore and violence - almost a certain box office draw. Lost in Translation could have been truer to its theme with a Chevy Chase and been better box office, without portraying Japan as a constant pop culture potpourri assault on the senses and sensibility. MOST UNFORTUNATE - The film circled in on the bizaare and exotic, even for Tokyo. A far cry from the chanting monks in Kyoto - which were briefly shown in the movie, and a very unappealing blushing Japanese bride in a wedding party. These were token scenes, magnanimous gestures toward traditional Japanese culture. Lost in Translation misses its comedic opportunity by focusing on everything else but the hilarious problems mistranslations cause. It's certainly worth watching if you can get around to it. But bring a Japanese translator. Review by James Wilson |
Beds sure are small in Tokyo! But look how big the rooms are!
"Suntory... For relaxing moments..." An unenthusiastic Murray is put through his paces by Japanese TV commercial makers.
"Hey there big guy, wanna play?"
Romping through Tokyo nightlife.
Competing for hubby's attention...
Reconciliation ? over shabu-shabu.
What's life all about anyway?
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