RE: virus: Lost in Translation

From: Blunderov (squooker@mweb.co.za)
Date: Sat Mar 20 2004 - 01:47:28 MST

  • Next message: rhinoceros: "RE: virus: Lost in Translation"

    [Blunderov] I am completely smitten with this movie! Comments?
    Best Regards

    Lost in Translation
      
    Yoshio Sato/Focus Features
    Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray's sometimes tender, sometimes funny
    relationship is at the heart of "Lost in Translation."
     
    Starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson.

    Directed by Sofia Coppola.

    1 hour, 42 minutes (R)

    Grade: A-

    The verdict: Lose yourself in this extraordinary movie.

    By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    Sofia Coppola is definitely her famous father's daughter, but she
    definitely doesn't make her father's films. Francis Ford Coppola's
    movies tend toward the operatic -- big emotions, big characters, big
    stories. Hers have the quality of a tone poem -- fragile, understated,
    intimate.

    Her astonishing second film, "Lost in Translation," is a wistfully
    romantic duet for two lost souls at sea in the neon pandemonium of
    Tokyo. Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a major American movie star in town
    to pick up a cool $2 million for sitting in a leather chair, wearing a
    tuxedo, holding a glass of Suntory whiskey and uttering the immortal
    line, "For relaxing times, it's Suntory time."

    These are not relaxing times for Bob. His career is still viable -- he
    gets recognized a lot and the fans' enthusiasm is genuine. Yet there's a
    sense that his work and his interest in it peaked several years ago. He
    has a family, but his 25-year-old marriage no longer holds his interest
    either. His wife, represented by an exasperated voice on the phone, is
    more concerned with redecorating her husband's study than she is in her
    husband. She FedEx's carpet samples to him with the affectionate note,
    "I like the burgundy. What do you think?"

    Plus, Bob can't sleep.

    So he spends time in the chicly dark rooftop bar in his sleekly
    impersonal hotel. That's where he meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson).
    She can't sleep either.

    Charlotte is in Tokyo with her husband of two years, John (Giovanni
    Ribisi), a celebrity photographer who's getting a little too comfortable
    (for her) with the aimless chitchat and air-kiss energy of his subjects.
    She's no longer sure whom she married. Neither is Bob. He's at one end
    of that bewilderment and she's at the other, both sleepless yet
    sleepwalking through life.

    They wake each other up.

    What follows is a non-affair to remember, which maintains a delicate
    balance between friends, lovers and something ineffably greater than
    either. They are made for each other in a million ways, with sex being
    one of the lesser ones (though that tension is ever-present).

    Their relationship -- sometimes tender, sometimes hilarious -- is the
    heart and soul of the movie. Still, many of the film's funniest scenes
    show them interacting with others. Murray's attempts to follow the
    directions barked at him in Japanese by a Suntory photographer is a
    comic masterpiece. He mimics various Rat Pack members, mining the subtle
    differences between Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and even Joey Bishop
    (whom his hosts have never heard of).

    Meanwhile, Charlotte endures the weirdness of John's übershallow
    conversations with an essence-of-L.A. starlet (Anna Faris) who's
    overseas on a promotional tour for her new movie.

    These close encounters with kiss-ups and idiots, plus the raucous
    cacophony of the city, are a jarring contrast to the whispered yet
    trenchant connection between Bob and Charlotte. The movie seems paced to
    Murray's famous deadpan, stronger on atmosphere and character than it is
    on story. Rather than moving in a straightforward manner, it's full of
    odd side trips: Bob at a strip club, saying thank you to a
    contortionist's inner thighs as he leaves (she's standing on her head);
    Charlotte soaking up the arcane and adrenalized artistry of a Tokyo
    games arcade.

    This is Johansson's breakthrough role. She's been sensational in movies
    like "Ghost World" and "The Man Who Wasn't There," but here we discover
    her distinctiveness -- her still-evolving creamy beauty and her
    clear-eyed simplicity. There's a freshness in her uncluttered approach
    to acting.

    Still, the movie belongs to Murray. Coppola wrote the role for him and
    spent five months talking him into doing it. The patented smart-aleck
    persona that made him a box-office megastar in movies like
    "Ghostbusters" and "Caddyshack" has acquired the patina of middle age.
    The supreme ironist now recognizes the innate irony of youthful
    cynicism. He can still do more with a raised eyebrow than anyone since
    Groucho Marx, but he's mellower and sometimes slightly poignant. He's
    gentle with Charlotte, even courtly. In a sense, he's an emblem of a
    generation of middle-aged anti-establishment hipsters, grown older and
    somehow, almost in spite of itself, wiser.

    This is a great performance, worthy not only of an Oscar nomination but,
    at this point in the year, of the prize itself.

    ---
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