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WPCNR BACKLOT WHISPERS. Review By Sunset Boulevard. February 17, 2004: Lost in Translation is lost all right — in critics’ minds. Yours truly, the roux of the Boulevard, was invited by a renowned movie collector to view Lost In Translation, the movie nominated by the National Academy of Arts and Sciences for an Oscar for Best Picture coming up in the next two weeks.
Yours truly and Mrs. Yours Truly arrived for pre-preview cocktails and canapés catered by a posh White Plains eatery at Mr. Collector’s pillored mansion Sunday evening. Afterwards we were ushered into Mr. Collector’s opulent private viewing theater for a showing of the movie that has been championed and praised, as Best Picture, for Best Director, and Best Actor, and Best Screenplay.
No less than that tastemaking icon of savvy, The New York Times ran a story about Bill Murray’s incredible performance over the weekend. Mr. Collector said he wanted to see for himself what the buzz was all about.
The question, upon viewing Sofia Coppola’s movie , is what started the buzz in the first place.
Lost In Translation is perhaps the worst message movie in a long time, as self-indulgent and as amateurish a piece of film you will ever see. It is so badly written, so indulgently edited, that you find yourself reaching for good things to say about it.
You are so eager for the movie to be over halfway through it, you feel compelled to make apologies for it. You find yourself saying things like, “this is really a great 15-second cityscape,” or, “this is a great soundtrack,” or “now, that’s funny,” as you scan the unending celluloid boredom, unfolding before you, for gems of immortal Hollywood excellence.
Had this movie been written and filmed by someone other than Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter, it would have been dismissed as an Orson Wells-clichéd compendium of what not to do in making a film.
First let’s take the opening credit: The opening credit is a shot of Scarlett Johansson’s underwear clad posterior and legs. Wow. How creative is that? A shocker.
Right away Ms. Coppola is sending a message here: this is a message film. How prophetic the opening shot of Ms. Johansson’s bottom is, let me tell you.
Bad Bad City. I am Soooo Alone.
We see Bill Murray emerging from the airport, arriving at a hotel, watching the lights of downtown Tokyo. A vast part of the movie consists of scenes like this one, Bill Murray or co-star, the nubile, compactly voluptuous Scarlett Johansson gazing at the “Oh Wow” cityscapes of Tokyo, thinking. The trouble is you do not know what they are thinking, ever, in this movie.
Ms. Coppola lets the elegant cinema photography tell a story, and what an original story and message: The big city is impersonal and dehumanizing. Is that the message, Ms. Coppola? How observant, how insightful.
Or, is it, the big city is filled with people who play at connecting? Is that the message, Ms. Coppola?
Or is it, if only I could find myself in this big city, someone who understood me and appreciated me for myself, because my husband/wife is so boring and does not appreciate me, Is that the message, Ms. Coppola?
Viewers Pick any one of previous choices or all.
Lost in Translation is a movie that is as unsatisfying as a therapist’s session, where the therapist never tells you what to do, but you find out for yourself in a journey of self discovery at $200 an hour. With Lost In Translation, it is $9.75 for what seems days.
It is the film I saw made by students in the late 60s, obsessed with super-8, who would take endless footage of everyday life happenings, jumpcut and string them together artistically and were rewarded with the sobriquet, “creative,” from their bearded professors.
What choo lookin’ at?
The critics love this movie. They are crazy.
This movie was rewarded with the following critic’s raves: “Lost is Found Gold! Sofia Coppola wrote the year’s best original screenplay and directred it with delicacy and precision. Bill Murray gives a performance that will be talked about for years. A career triumph!”
“Bill Murray is the best actor of the year! He gives the performance of his career. The beauty of Lost in Translation is in its exquisitely captured details. Working from her own original script, Sofia Coppola’s focus is unwavering. Unforgettable.”
And this: “ This year’s only truly great film! Bravo to everyone involved in this miracle achievement.”
Balderdash! I think the reason this movie is getting so much incredible hype is the man behind it, Sofia Coppola’s Dad, Francis Ford Coppola, is the film’s executive producer.
Critics are afraid to offend Coppola, director of the interminable yawn of The Godfather series, that glamorized Thugville, and had its own interminable sections, finally putting Marlon Brando’s mumbles to good use. How else can you explain Ebert and Roeper giving this movie two thumbs up?
This movie is a joke. It is The Emperor’s New Clothes on film. It is so bad, it must be good, the critics seem to be saying.
Hilarious? Like a Funeral.
How else to explain the DVD slipcase copy saying this movie is hilarious. It is not. It has less than 10 good laughs in it. Most of the jokes mock the Japanese, and their imitation of American culture, and the Japanese politeness and respect. This humor has a very sour taste to it. I laughed, but felt uncomfortable doing so.
Lost is hyped as a comedy in its trailers, yet when you see it, you are getting a twenty-something writer’s view of how lousy middle age is, complete with a youth’s callow clichés of middle age.
Old reliables.
Witness the dialogue singled out by The Times as good, where Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte asks Murray (as Bob Harris) in the hotel bar if he bought a Porsche as part of his midlife crisis. This is a cliché!
If you take the premise that Ms. Coppola is simply mimicking the banter in bars, I’ll cut her a pass there. But, it is soooo unrealistic. There just has to be some electricity. Ms. Coppola ends the scene with the big verbal payoff after several clever banters by Murray with the lines “I wish I could sleep.” “Me, too.”
Man, that is heavy, double-meaning dialogue: are our characters so haunted by angst, they cannot sleep. Cleverly written don’t you think?
This is typical of the way Coppola’s scenes dribble out.
But, wait, perhaps this is really the way life is? Is Ms. Coppola saying, through some of the most mundane dialogue ever filmed on celluloid, that real life dialogue is like that? LIT is film-making that leaves you the breathless at the end of each sequence, thinking, what is the point of this scene?
Waiting for the Payoff
You keep waiting for some passion between these two protagonists, wanting the payoff, and Ms. Coppola never gives it to you. This violates the first rule of filmmaking you have to have a crisis, followed by an critical incident, followed by a resolution. Lost In Translation starts with a crisis, delivers a critical incident, Bob Harris digging Charlotte, but frozen into inaction, and the movie never pays off for the viewer.
Flunking Cinema 101
Coppolla pulls off many cinema sins in this movie. She could have told the story in an hour, and she leaves many devices untapped. There are a great deal of scenes of Charlotte and Bob that involve drinking, smoking, partying, with the camera lingering on smoking and forms of self-indulgence.
This use of the camera to say what you are too untalented to write into the script is Felliniesque and was done much better by Fellini in La Dolce Vita. La Dolce Vita actually appears in a television set in one of Murray’s hypnotically compelling scenes of lounging on his bed in the Tokyo luxury hotel.
Actually when you think about it La Dolce Vita was pretty overrated too. Oh the meaninglessness of having a good time and being rich!
What film-making brilliance here! Making life in a luxury hotel on the road a metaphor for the meaningless of an actor’s life. How sensitive. How insightful. Coppola loves the hotel. She uses the scene of Bill Murray lounging in a hot tub or on a bed, using a television clicker to click through the waste of Japanese television. Really grabs you by the intellectual throat, film-making insight like this.
Then there is the classic error of storytelling: the inexplicable action. In the middle of the movie Bill Murray makes a connection that has no rhyme or reason based on his attitude shown previously. This is the non-sequitor error. This writing contrivance, apparently put in too keep Charlotte and Bob apart, is inexplicable, based on Bob’s previous behavior.
They tell you not to do that in film school.
Devices Lost.
Charlotte’s husband goes off on a photo shoot so she and Bob start hanging out together. Somehow Charlotte invites Bob to go with her friends who are Japanese…who all talk Japanese to Bob and Charlotte in the scenes. Who are these Japanese guys and dolls? How did Charlotte meet them? What are they saying? How do they decide what to do? This is like basic cinema stuff. Call for Logic on the set!
And Bob and Charlotte seem to be having a good time. Does this mean they understand Japanese? What are all the bizarrely dressed and fashioned Japanese men and women saying to Bob Harris and Charlotte that makes them laugh? Darned if I know.
Ms. Coppolla would have scored some comedic laughs here if she had subtitled the film, as Woody Allen did in What’s Up Tiger Lily? Lily was Woody’s first movie in which he took a Japanese action film and subtitled it with comic lines. The effect of Bob Harris seeming to understand what is going on around him and Charlotte is unrealistic.
Paging a Message.
This is another blockbuster set of original messages delivered by Ms. Coppola. Is it we’re all the same the world all over and there are no barriers? Is it, lap dancing is bad (shown in grotesque closeup) but makes everything all right? Is it, if you can afford $500 a day to stay in a luxury hotel, you can’t have a good time? I do not get it.
The praise for this movie seems to indicate dumfoundedness on the part of the movie critics. Are they dumbfounded seeing a movie so bad, it is actually good? Is this the 21st Century Plan 9 From Outer Space?
Devices overused?
When you don’t know what to write next, you have to use contrivances to fill out the film time. The extensive use of the beautiful cinematography of Lance Acord as visual bridges is a tell-tale sign that this story does not know where it is going. The writer is shooting as she goes along. (Let’s put in a cityscape here before I think of my next wonderful set of dialogue.)
The cityscapes, its crowds are beautiful, but serve no purpose in the movie other than to pad the running time between stretches of set pieces of mundane quickly forgotten, contrived lines.
The Whisper in the Ear.
Ironically, the best dialogue in the film is mumbled and not understandable.
That is not a good sign.
Appearing when it does in the movie is a contrivance, reminiscent of Hair’s nudity. The Murray “whisper in the ear” appears and is the only passionate moment in the movie.
The “Whisper in the Ear” contrivance is and has been recognized by critics as brilliant and creative. It sure is. It is a creative way for the writer to admit, “I do not know the story I am telling or how to end a scene with an all-time memorable line.”
“The Whisper in the Ear” has the same effect as giving a movie two conclusions, or three, or four.
Thank goodness for a soundtrack.
The soundtrack in this movie is used very nicely, and thank God it is there because you find yourself paying attention to it, because the story doesn’t grab you. You keep waiting the whole movie for Bob Harris to just jump Charlotte. I mean, she is a little honey. (Great mouth, good legs). I mean, viewing this, you’re saying let’s get on with it.
But no, Ms. Coppola doesn’t give you that. She writes a movie about a guy on a business trip in Tokyo, who meets a cute woman, has chemistry, and experiences sensual tension and feeling he has long forgotten and then fights against it. And maybe that is the message, maybe some kind of moral message here for us slightly older guys, and gals intrigued with straying. We think we do, but we really don’t want to. But, this is not exactly a new message, it’s the easy message.
The Movie to Nowhere
The movie is reminiscent of Zabriski Point, Heaven’s Gate, Vanishing Point and Thelma and Louise – movies that don’t deliver. (When Thelma and Louise drive off the cliff, it is totally out of character, for example, and we hate that.)
Lost is a movie that is afraid to take the middle aged actor out of his programmed existence and into the insecurity and perhaps happiness provided by the young chick, Charlotte.
Now that would be edgy.
Murray should get best actor. Because he had to really act to act in this one.
As for Murray’s being Best Actor. This is his best acting job because perhaps never has an actor had to work so hard to keep a straight face in doing the serious dialogue in this movie.
Ms. Coppola’s cinematographer Lance Acord (love that name), makes great use of Mr. Murray’s pitted visage to bring us the “ravages of success look.” The same technique has been used to portray a message of “been through it, done it , seen it all,” for such similar mugs as Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, Clint Eastwood, Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. The studied lingering closeup of the actor to deliver a message is the oldest technique in the book. Ms. Coppola uses it a lot.
That Murray had to restrain himself from bursting out laughing every day doing this script is the real acting job, and that’s why he deserves Best Actor.
World Record for Head Shots.
Murray’s awkwardness throughout the movie and his sense of alienation (why is it that alienation always seems to be the theme of these artsy-craftsy movies hailed as triumphs? Just once I’d like to see an artsy-craftsy movie about a sense of happiness), is convey through use of the headshot, many, many, many, many, many, many times.
At times he does “Bogart-weary, “ “Newman-charismatic,” and “Eastwood-irony,” and are indulgent riffs by the director. The silent photograph of Murray’s face is used a lot, and you the viewer have to interpret. Lazy writing.
The jokes of Lost in Translation consist of Murray’s lack of interaction with his television commercial directors, his still-ad photographers, and his partying without conversing with various Japanese young people who smoke, drink, and indulge a lot. And, trust me, friends, they are not hilarious, and are very reminiscent of Murray’s Saturday Night Live humor. You laugh to be polite.
You never forget for a moment that is Bill Murray up there. And, it is preposterous to say this is “unquestionably one of the all-time finest performances.”
It is not. It is good. It’s all right, but you never quite buy Murray’s performance as real.
Scarlett Johansson a Foil With a Future
Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte plays an interesting role. But, what is lacking on the screen in her developing relationship with Mr. Murray is her motivation for being attracted to him. Is it because he is older? Has more knowledge? Is it because he is funny? Is it because he pays attention to her? Is it because she needs a friend? Is it because her husband ignores her? Is it a sexual need? Is it because she feels he can give her wisdom?
She seems quite interested in passion with her husband, but appears to repress her desire with Bob. What she wants in Bob Harris or sees in him, other than someone who pays attention to her is not developed at all by the script. Is it one-night stand time? Is sex just something to do? Is she really afraid of lovemaking that engulfs you?
She is an attractive and earthy young lady with a lot of substance, with Deneuve lips and Bacall eyes and a soulful quality few young actresses have. Her talent was barely mined in this movie.
Is There Anything New here?
No.
The movie raises questions that have been raised before about the middle aged condition. But supplies no new answers, but maybe it’s because we do not know what questions are being asked. (Gee, do I make a critic’s degree with that statement?)
The writing does not pay off in this movie, because there is never that moment of zen when a true feeling is released until the very end. They seem on the verge.
There is a touching sensuous scene in the movie where Bill Murray touches her foot. That is perhaps one of two sensitive and emotionally gripping scenes in the movie. The other is the final scene.
On the Verge With the Fear of Going Over.
But, here I will do a critic copout…perhaps that is the message.
Everyone is always on the verge, few vault over the verge. However, Woody Allen does this kind of movie a lot funnier, with a lot better realistic dialogue, never wastes a cutaway, and knows where his story is going.
Lost in Translation makes a classic mistake of film-making, promoting itself as a comedy, when it is a serious movie, much like its main character Bob Harris, it does not know what it or he is.
Best Picture it is not.
Perhaps a better award for it would be “Most Indulged Screenwriter,” and “Most Deceptively Promoted Picture,” or my Award “Best Bad Picture.”
