Mia - 2982 - Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation (2003) is a drama and romance film directed and written by Sofia Coppola. It was nominated for three Oscar awards and won the Best Writing in 2003. [1] This article will demonstrate how Sofia Coppola made a successful film about loneliness and lost from her unique female perspective.

The Director

Sofia Coppola is the youngest child and only daughter of Francis Ford Coppola who directed The Godfather(1972). Unlike the famous cousin Nicolas Cage, she was a awful actress. Having been panned for most of her efforts in front of the camera, she decided to change her career. That's a wise decision, now she becomes a successful movie director.

Although she was born in the most famous family of filmmakers in Hollywood, her styles is completely different from her father. Francis Ford Coppola used to integrate the human nature in great narration strength, while Sofia Coppola prefer to represents small details in the life by a perceptual way. As a female director that feel things more acutely, her films have greater sensitivity and intuition, more likely to express a kind of feeling and emotion rather than the story.

Why Tokyo - The Choice of Filming Location

The story happens in Tokyo, Japan. A middle-aged washed out former star Bob Harris(Bill Murray) and a young girl called Charlotte(Scarlett Johansson) who feel left out by her husband meets in this foreign country. They feel alienated and lost, not only because of the translation and cultural conflict, but also because they are lost in their lives.

Sofia Coppola chose Tokyo as the locale of this movie, she said "That was really the starting point of the story. I never thought about setting it somewhere else." [2] Generally speaking, Japan is a mixture of the eastern and western cultures. The high rhythm's material life and the traditional culture blend in here, that makes Japan fills delicate contradiction: too much hospitality and cold atmosphere, high technology and high suicide rates, Skyscrapers and short people. Therefore, when the two Americans come to Tokyo, a bizarre world, they all suffered from the language barrier and culture shock, then their lonely and empty are maximized.

(Middle shot: Charlotte sits lonely on windowsill, contrasts greatly with Tokyo's colorful night in the background.)

Another benefit of choosing Tokyo is that exotic settings appeal more audience. Because of the big different between the eastern and western culture, all the Tokyo scenes make the audience feel fresh and interesting. Consequently, this is one of reasons this small art film grossed 119.7 million US dollars. [3]

（Close-up: a famous Japanese music game "太鼓の达人")

As a complement, here is a animation called "Japan - The Strange Country", made by a Japanese designer named Kenichi Tanaka. If you watch it, you will find Japan is a perfect place to tell the story.

Stuck - The Theme of Sofia Coppola's Movie

Obviously, all the Sofia Coppola's movies have the same theme: be stuck in somewhere. In The Virgin Suicides（1999）, the Lisbon girls are stuck in the home, and in Marie Antoinette（2006）, Marie is stuck in the strange palace.

In this movie, Lost in Translation, The lead actor and the lead actress are both stuck in a foreign country, and also a period in their lives. Bob is in a mid-life crisis, his wife is more concerned with the color of carpet than him. He feel his life has passed away. While Charlotte is in her 20s, graduate fresh from university, her life is just at the beginning, but when she is stuck in a hotel of Tokyo, and her husband do not really care about her, she can not help to thinking: What is my life going to be?

There are two impressive scenes to show the "stuck" feeling, and also presented Coppola's acute sense of reading people's slightly feelings. The first one is Charlotte cries depressively after she called her friend and whispered "I did't feel anything...I don't know who I married..." , but the friend does not really pay attention on Charlotte's troubles. This one minute and fifteen seconds long scene used close-up shot and off-white hues to expresses the depress mood of Charlotte, and sometimes turns into back middle shot to show her lonely silhouette.

(Close-up: Charlotte is so depressed that she starts to cry)

The second one is Bob standing in a swimming pool with a puzzled look when he saw the Japanese people are jumping and dancing with music in the pool, then, he just dive into the water to hide from it. This scene is a middle shot and used several camera angles, the color is relatively blue.

(Middle shot: Bob dive into the water to escape from everything)

There is a poster of this film, Charlotte was walking in the crowded street of Tokyo with an umbrella, rows upon rows of high buildings behind her, the poster read "Everybody wants to be found". In fact, they found each other in the vast sea of humanity, when they are stuck and lost and being ignored.

（a poster of Lost in Translation）

Furthermore, this movie reminds of another film called The Painted Veil (2006)，directed by John Curran. It is a story about a English women goes to China with her indifferent husband in 1920s, and she faces the same problem with Charlotte that feels like to be stuck in a dark prison cell. The difference is that she finally opened heart with her husband, but Charlotte did not.

(a still from The Painted Veil)

Ambiguous Storyline and Slow Tempo

Sofia Coppola is a director that never gives audience the answer, so her movie is full of ambiguous storyline. Like audience can not clearly understand why the Lisbon girls kill themselves in The Virgin Suicides, we also confuse the ambiguous relationship between Bob and Charlotte, and their future. Do they fall in love? I do not think so. In my view, they are more like travelling companion in a station of life journey, they understanding each other, supporting each other, but do not need to be together. Therefore, in the end, they just break-up calmly. Never mind what Bob whispered into Charlotte's ear, the only thing we need to know is this movie is all about two persons meet each other in a unique moment of their lives, and it changes them forever though it's a short time.

The tempo of this story is quite slow. It is one-third of the entire film before the lead actor meets the lead actress. This scene lasts four minutes, Bob and Charlotte sit in a bar with a distance between them, and it is the most important conversation scene in this part. Then Coppola used a lot of scenes to make the two characters closer together, she arranged the two look for nightlife in Tokyo, such as pub, game room and KARAOKE. This part reaches a tragic climax by the hospital scene.

（Middle shot: their first conversation）

(Long shot: Bob takes Charlotte to hospital)

A major turning point Occurs in the two thirds of the film, Bob and Charlotte have the second important long talk on the bed, they touch each other's heart and realize they have to return to their own lives . After that, their relationship is going downhill, till the separation in the end.

（Middle shot: Bob and Charlotte talk on the bed)

To sum up, this movie is ambiguous and slow, consist of relative loosely structured. That may

makes the audience feel bored, but that is its own unique charm and unique style.

Cameras and Lights

Sofia Coppola only took 27 days to shoot this film [4]. Maybe because of that, the cameras and lights of this movie are quite special.

There is no big scene at all, but a lot of pho tographic techniques were used in this film. Whether the flowing and changing shots or long take are perfectly suitable to the scenario. For example, at the beginning of the film, the camera fixes on the heroine's butt that wears a light peach-color underwear for 30 second long take, and makes a very impressive start.

（Middle shot: Charlotte's butt)

Besides, there are a lot of bird's eye view of the dense city blocks and roads of Tokyo. These unique shots shows that people are so tiny in the big concrete forest, everyone may lost in this more and more materialistic world.

（long shot: a street scene in Tokyo)

About the lights, when Sofia Coppola received the Oscar reward, she thanks a person named Wong Kar-wai who is a Hong Kong filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylized films. Wong was listed at number three on the respected Sight & Sound Top Ten Directors list of modern times.[5] Lost in Translation has similar feelings with Wong Kar-wai's famous film In the Mood for Love (2000), especially in lights.

（a post of In the Mood for Love）

It is said that Sofia Coppola did not arrange enough lights because of the time short, but the film still looks very delicate on the screen. Although the bar and pub scenes are extreme dark, there is a special feeling during it, just like Wong Kar-wai's movie that people all looks ambiguous and with distance.

（Middle shot: Bob and Charlotte sit in a dark pub)

Special Brand of Humor

Humor plays an important role in our daily life, and Sofia Coppola is a director that very good at using her own brand of humor.

For example, The Mexican boy in The Virgin Suicides and the scene of Marie dressing clothes in Marie Antoinette. As such, there is a lot of humor in Lost in Translation, the most representative one is Bob in the elevator, he is much taller then every Japanese. Those small humor just reflected the various differences between East and West, and attracted more audience's attention.

（Middle shot: Bob in the elevator)

Another function of humor in this movie is that humor promotes the plot development. For instance, Bob is trapped on the treadmill because he does not know how to use the strange Japanese machine, he runs faster and faster, until screams "help! help!". In a sense, that is also the mirror of his situation, and really reflect his exhausted heart after the misleading translating during the advertisement shooting process.

（Middle shot: Bob is trapped on the treadmill)

The Perfect Combination of Music and Story Line

No one can deny that Sofia Coppola has a great taste in music, especially in alternative music. She used music to build extraordinarily strong and dreamy atmosphere to show the lonely of the characters.

To illustrate, when the movie starts, Bob looks at flourishing Tokyo from the car windows with a song called Girls by a British electronic band Death In Vegas, this scene creates an exciting composition by neon at night looks with the psychedelic music.

Another example of this is when Charlotte visits the peaceful temple, the music which is very ethereal is Alone In Kyoto by a trip-hop band AIR, this song melts into the stone on the lotus pond, the eyes of Charlotte, and the hand that the groom puts out to the bride. In addition, when Charlotte jumps over the stones, the musical rhythm also has rhythmic jumping.

Air - Alone In Kyoto (Live)

At the end of the film, Bob finds Charlotte in the crowd, her eyes follows him until he is out of sight after the hug. the song Just Like Honey by The Jesus & Mary Chain sounded slowly, and the lyrics perfectly combined the storyline . "Listen to the girl , As she takes on half the world...Walking back to you , Is the hardest thing that I can do.That I can do for you...Just like honey..."

（Close-up: the hug in the end of the film)

To summarize, impressive music is the key to the whole film, and Coppola certainly did it.

In conclusion, Lost in Translation is a very successful film. Sofia Coppola turned a ordinary story into a extraordinary film in a different way by unique perspective and special technique. Just like a critic named Joe Queenan said, it is a film that has a brain; but more than that, it has a soul. [6]

List of Reference:

[1] IMDB. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335266/

[2] About. http://movies.about.com/cs/lostintranslation/a/lostsofia.htm

[3] Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=lostintranslation.htm

[4] Lost in Translation. http://www.lost-in-translation.com/qaPopup.html
[5] BFI. http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/63/
[6] Queenan, Joe (January 10, 2004). "A yen for romance". The Guardian.