Lost in Translation (film)

Lost in Translation is a 2003 romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Bill Murray stars as Bob Harris, a fading American movie star who is having a midlife crisis when he travels to Tokyo to promote Suntory whisky. There, he befriends another disillusioned American named Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a young woman and recent college graduate. Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris, and Fumihiro Hayashi are also featured. The film explores themes of alienation and disconnection against a backdrop of cultural displacement in Japan. It defies mainstream narrative conventions and is atypical in its depiction of romance.

Coppola started writing the film after spending time in Tokyo and becoming fond of the city. She began forming a story about two characters experiencing a "romantic melancholy" in the Park Hyatt Tokyo, where she stayed while promoting her first feature film, the 1999 drama The Virgin Suicides. Coppola envisioned Murray playing the role of Bob Harris from the beginning and tried to recruit him for up to a year, relentlessly sending him telephone messages and letters. While Murray eventually agreed to play the part, he did not sign a contract; Coppola spent a quarter of the film's $4 million budget without knowing if he would actually appear for shooting. When Murray finally arrived, Coppola described feelings of significant relief.

Principal photography began on September 29, 2002, and lasted 27 days. Coppola kept a flexible schedule during filming with a small crew and minimal equipment. The screenplay was short and Coppola often allowed a significant amount of improvisation during filming. The film's director of photography, Lance Acord, used available light as often as possible, and many Japanese places of business and public areas were used as locations for shooting. After 10 weeks of editing, Coppola sold distribution rights for the United States and Canada to Focus Features, and the company promoted the film by generating positive word of mouth before its theatrical release.

Lost in Translation premiered on August 29, 2003, at the Telluride Film Festival, and was distributed to American theatres on September 12, 2003, to major commercial success, grossing $118 million worldwide, and receiving critical acclaim, with praise for the performances of Murray and Johansson as well as the writing and direction of Coppola; minor criticism was given to the film's depiction of Japan and Japanese people. At the 76th Academy Awards, Lost in Translation won Coppola Best Original Screenplay, and the film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Coppola), and Best Actor (Murray). Other accolades won include three Golden Globe Awards and three British Academy Film Awards.

Bob Harris is a burnt out American movie star who arrives in Tokyo to appear in lucrative advertisements for Suntory's Hibiki whisky. He stays at the upscale Park Hyatt Tokyo and is miserable due to problems within his 25-year marriage and a midlife crisis.

Charlotte, another American staying at the hotel, is a young Yale graduate in philosophy who is accompanying her husband John while he works as a celebrity photographer. Charlotte is feeling similarly disenchanted as she questions her marriage and is anxious about her future. They both struggle additionally with bouts of jet lag and culture shock in Tokyo and pass the time loitering around the hotel, Charlotte also trying ikebana by chance.

Charlotte is repelled by a vacuous Hollywood actress named Kelly, who is also at the hotel promoting a film. Kelly bumps into Charlotte and John, gushing over photography sessions she has previously done with him. Bob and Charlotte frequently cross paths in the hotel and eventually start to connect in the hotel bar.

After several encounters, when John is on assignment outside Tokyo, Charlotte invites Bob into the city to meet some local friends. They bond over an evening in Tokyo, where they experience the city nightlife together and end up singing at a karaoke box. In the days that follow, Bob and Charlotte spend more time together, and their friendship strengthens. One night while watching television and drinking sake, while neither can sleep, the two share an intimate conversation about Charlotte's personal uncertainties and their married lives.

Bob has a cold conversation with his wife, then spends the night with a jazz singer from the hotel bar. Charlotte hears the woman singing in Bob's room the next morning, leading to tension between Bob and Charlotte during a shabu-shabu lunch together later that day. The pair re-encounter each other in the evening and Bob reveals that he will be leaving Tokyo the following day.

Bob and Charlotte reconcile and express how they will miss each other, making a final visit to the hotel bar. The next morning, when Bob is leaving the hotel, he and Charlotte share sincere but unsatisfactory goodbyes. On Bob's taxi ride to the airport, he sees Charlotte on a crowded street, stops the car, and walks to her. He then embraces her and whispers something in her ear. The two share a kiss and say goodbye before Bob departs, with Bob smiling for the first time.

The film's writer-director, Sofia Coppola, has described Lost in Translation as a story about "things being disconnected and looking for moments of connection", a perspective that has been shared by critics and scholars. In a cultural sense, Bob and Charlotte are disoriented by feelings of jet lag and culture shock as a result of foreign travel to Japan. Bob is bewildered by his interactions with a Japanese commercial director whom he cannot understand, realizing that the meaning of his communication is "lost in translation" by an interpreter. Moreover, both are sleepless from a change in time zone, choosing to cope with their wakefulness by making late-night visits to the hotel bar. Such feelings provoke a sense of estrangement from their environment, but they also exacerbate deeper experiences of alienation and disconnection in their lives. Bob and Charlotte are both in troubled marriages and facing similar crises of identity, as Charlotte is unsure of what to do with her life and questions what role she should embrace in the world, while Bob is invariably reminded of his fading stature as a movie star and feels disassociated from the identity by which he is already defined.

Such experiences are heightened by the characters' contact with the city environment of Tokyo. Bob feels alienated by seeing his likeness used in an advertisement while he is driven from the airport to his hotel, and the colorful cityscape is rendered as a frenetic environment by which he is overwhelmed. Charlotte feels adrift as she attempts to find meaning while wandering Tokyo, and feels isolated as she peers over the city from her hotel room window. The Park Hyatt Tokyo offers hermetic qualities that insulate the characters from the city and is the site Bob chooses to seek refuge from his ails. These shared impressions of alienation create common ground for Bob and Charlotte to cultivate a personal connection. When Charlotte invites Bob to experience the Tokyo nightlife, she reduces his sense of distance from the city and the two develop a connection based on small moments together. In the little time they have together, each realize they are not alone in seeking a sense of something deeper in their lives. Coppola, speaking about the brief nature of their encounter, remarked, "For everyone, there are those moments when you have great days with someone you wouldn't expect to. Then you have to go back to your real lives, but it makes an impression on you. It's what makes it so great and enjoyable."

Geoff King, a scholar who wrote a book about the film, comments that the experiences of the central characters are one factor that lends Lost in Translation to varied interpretations by academics. Todd McGowan reads the film from a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, arguing that the film encourages the embrace of "absence" in one's life and relationships. He describes Coppola's depiction of Tokyo "as a city bubbling over with excess", which offers an empty promise of gratification. In his view, both Bob and Charlotte recognize that they cannot find meaning in Tokyo's attractions, so they bond over their shared sense of emptiness in them. Lucy Bolton offers a feminist reading, arguing that Lost in Translation evokes the thought of feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray by highlighting issues of young womanhood. She argues that the film provides a complex portrait of Charlotte's female subjectivity and an optimistic rendering of the character's pursuit for individual expression.

Lost in Translation has been broadly examined in terms of its narrative structure, with commentators noting that it contains few plot events as compared with films in the Hollywood mainstream. Narrative events are mostly focused on the development of Bob and Charlotte's relationship, with few "external" obstacles that impact the central characters. King notes, "More time is taken to evoke the impressions, feelings, and experiences of the central characters", which represents "a shift in the hierarchical arrangement of [film elements]" that prioritizes character experiences over plot. The literary critic Steve Vineberg argues that "the links of the story are indeed there, only they're not typical cause-and-effect connections. They're formed by the emotions that gather at the end of one episode and pour into the next". King maintains that while the plot does progress according to a basic linear causality, "If the episodic quality often seems to the fore, this is partly a matter of the pacing of individual sequences that are very often leisurely and dedicated to the establishment or development of mood and atmospherics". Coppola said she wanted the story to emphasize the qualities of an intimate moment, and she did not want to impose grandiose narrative devices on the characters such as "a war keeping them apart".