I think I’m turning Japanese. I think I’m turning Japanese. I really think so…
Sofia Coppola’s recent movie, “Lost in Translation,” gives the viewer a realistic version of what it might feel like to be in a strange land during a peculiar period of your life.
The movie stars are Bill Murray as Bob Harris (an older American actor traveling in Tokyo), and Scarlet Johansson as Charlotte (a younger American intellectual). Their paths cross at a fancy Japanese Hotel where Bob is being paid $2 million to star in a series of whiskey commercials and Charlotte is vacationing while her husband works as a photographer. They befriend each other because they both have trouble sleeping and find themselves estranged from the rest of the world.
“It was interesting. A real think,” said Guilford alumni Eric Leaf.
Bob seems to be losing touch with his wife and children stateside and Charlotte, who just graduated from Yale, is looking for her place in life. Their story unfolds under the flashing billboards and surrounded by unfamiliar language of Japanese.
“It was very real,” said senior Blake Ramsey. “Unlike any movie that I have seen before.”
It was about human relationships, but certainly not a romantic comedy.
Bill Murray plays the most serious character I have ever seen him play, but the movie is subtly humorous.
One viewer commented, “It was slow at times, didn’t really go anywhere, and just didn’t do anything for me … It had a few laughs in it, typical fish-out-of-water stuff but Murray is good and you believe his character.”
While you should not expect an action movie, you should expect a beautifully filmed picture that plays with both music and timing to create a lifelike experience for the viewer.
By the end of the movie I understood the tagline that “Everybody wants to be found,” even if it means going to Tokyo.