"Lost In Translation"

"Lost In Translation"

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Starring: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi

Rated: R (for adult situations, adult language and mild nudity)

Running Time: 105 minutes

Best Suited For: Art house intellectuals, lost love and vérité purists, Bill Murray fans

Least Suited For: Plot seekers and lighthearted love story buffs

"Lost In Translation" is a visually impressive film that trades a good deal of substance for style. It’s a bittersweet, dramatic tale of two lonely people lost in a foreign land (Tokyo) who eventually come together to find—well, more loneliness.

Bill Murray plays aging movie star Bob Harris, doing a weeklong series of photo and commercial shoots to pick up an easy two mil by endorsing a brand of Japanese whiskey. Scarlett Johansson plays Charlotte, the young wife of a harried photographer, played by Giovanni Ribisi. Jetlagged, neither Bob nor Charlotte can sleep at night, and after several polite nocturnal encounters at the hotel bar, begin to bond as strangers in a strange land.

Director Sofia Coppola does an admirable job setting the stage for an American audience, capturing Tokyo as a light-drenched, loud and overcrowded neverland—as alien to some of us as the dark side of the moon. Yet once the stage is set—then set again for good measure—the plot unfolds at a crawl. There are numerous shots of Bob or Charlotte staring dolefully out windows or reflected against night-shrouded glass panes, as Tokyo bustles and gyrates around them.

"Lost In Translation" is very much an art house film, a character study that works on some levels, but never really fulfills its obligation (to an audience) to push either Bob or Charlotte into uncharted psychological territory. We spend a good deal of time lost in minutia, given little reason to hope that these characters will grow as a result of their time together. During one karaoke scene, we spend far too long discovering that neither Bob nor Charlotte are particularly good singers. No other inroads are made, no nuances uncovered.

Charlotte seems to know a good many Japanese acquaintances (made through her absentee husband, we suspect), but she seems as lost among them as she does amid the imposing Japanese landscape. Her loneliness foretells a doomed marriage—just as Bob’s cynical weariness suggests the waning of his own 25-year union. The juxtaposition is obvious—yet there are no other similarities to pull the characters together; no exchange of wisdom to make their friendship significant; no magic that makes us believe these two people could (or should) find even a slight chance at happiness together.

Bob’s character is flawed, clearly yearning—there’s a hint of "Lolita" in the film—although he remains admirable in Charlotte’s presence. Charlotte appears impressionable—in many ways advanced for her years, but also naive, like a small-town girl over her head in the big city. Bob is cynical, and between clever quips, mostly dour. At one point there’s a whisper between them—a shared secret that’s obviously a poignant, meaningful moment, although the words are never revealed to the audience. Apparently Coppola felt that we should imagine something profound has transpired between these two people, but didn’t know quite what such profundity might be.

We never learn the secret, and personally, I felt cheated.

Even so, Bill Murray does good work here, using his comedic timing as well as possible for a character who teeters at the edge of a midlife meltdown. Some scenes are fresh and funny, yet seldom without an overtone of sadness that infuses the film like dark clouds on a day that warns of rain.

Murray can elicit empathy from an audience better than most comedic actors, and much like in his work in 1984’s underrated "The Razor’s Edge" or even his stellar performance in "Groundhog Day," he can maneuver seamlessly between wry perception, intelligent cynicism and pathos. Scarlett Johansson also performs admirably as the lost and lonely Charlotte, searching for far more than what fading film star Bob Harris is able to offer.

In a nutshell: While there are sparks and glimmers of fulfillment in "Lost In Translation," little passion ignites between the characters or between filmmaker and audience. This is a visually stimulating yet sketchily plotted film that becomes mired in its own stylistic artistry. While perhaps a rich character study, the story remains elusive—simply a glimpse of two lonely people who pass in regret, destined for separate journeys and separate lives.