Sin #6: Translating Loneliness

Bob Harris arrives in Tokyo filled with puzzlement and delight. The bright shine of the neon lights gives the city a dreamlike quality and Harris expects it to be a pleasant escape from his monotonous life, a few days of tranquility in an alien environment.

Charlotte follows her husband doggedly through the trip even though she’s not having much fun by herself in their hotel room. The city seems as distant as her husband and she’s ready to meet some friends at a club.

Fate will bring Bob and Charlotte together for a connection that will last for only a few days, until they both return to their lives and remember, well, that they will always have Tokyo.

Every once in a while I think about them, and also about Tokyo and how I would rather get lost there than anywhere else. Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” is not a love story in a traditional sense, it’s too wise to link these characters romantically or even suggest a sexual relationship. It goes deeper, stating a link between two characters that come from completely different backgrounds but share a common thread, loneliness.

Bill Murray has one of those expressive faces that suggests years of knowledge being expressed as wry sarcasm since he can hardly contain his disappointment in others. (I also remember his travelogue searching for an old girlfriend who sent him a letter in the lovely “Broken Flowers”). As Bob Harris he’s too washed out and tired to reject a proposal to guest star in a hideous and ridiculous Japanese game show (see youtube clips of these programs to realize that the show is in no measure an exaggeration).

On the other hand there’s Scarlett Johansson’s Charlotte, wise and curious, frail and beautiful. She’s the kind of girl who isn’t interested in the jock; someone who’d rather spent her days with a well-versed and culturally relevant artist than her dumb friends who are getting married and having kids. But she’s lost in a unhappy marriage.

Everybody who writes about “Lost of Translation” mentions the scene where Bob whispers to Charlotte something the audience isn’t allowed to hear (there’s a video on the net that tries to interpret the words but it’s still not clear); it doesn’t really matter, deep down we know what he told her and how they influenced each other’s lives.

It would be an interesting experiment for Coppola to revisit these characters after some years (kind of like what Richard Linklater did with “Before Sunset”), but after all, if Bob and Charlotte should always remember Tokyo, we’ll always have their movie to remember them.