Lost In Translation
(2.5/5) I didn’t get what the big deal was about- it’s visually lush, Murray’s great and Johanssen’s hot, but(t) I found it more inert and racially offensive than melancholic or funny.
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Racially offensive? This is the first time I’ve come across sm1 using this phrase to describe this movie.
The Japanese city here was more like a catalyst here to explore and accentuate the boredom and emptiness that both the main leads were experiencing. No way offensive.
I’ll not write more @ the film here as I started and saw it went to 2 paras already. Hence deleted all. Just put in the reqd here…
Yes, yes, yes! Completely agree. I mean for heaven’s sake, they shot the goddamn film in the Tokyo Park Hyatt which is as Western a space in Tokyo as could be – choc-a-bloc with international business travelers.
What bloody alienation and boredom – Tokyo is lively, has a huge expat population and is very cosmopolitan. Sophia Coppola actually expects empathy for characters who couldn’t amuse themselves in Tokyo and had to seek another American out to feel validated?
Thank goodness I saw this one on video and also spared myself from watching the other Coppola hatchet job – Marie Antoinette. The most overrated new director ever.
I agree with Dewi. If you can get bored in Tokyo then you prob shouldn’t leave Baltimore in the first place.
I agree that the film underscores the almost universal inability of the west to look at life in another cultural milleu with untainted curiosity. Having lived in the “west” for some years now(australia, so not really geographically west but culturally speaking)it’s something I now take for granted but this movie had a rather disproportionate dollop of that distortion. Having said that, I do feel it’s melancholic heart just the same. I found the movie interesting but certainly close minded in it’s perspective racially…japan if anything is one of the more uniquely interesting cultures of the world.
I loved everything about this film.
I can be bored anywhere in the world, if I am in the wrong mindspace.
These two characters weren’t bored of Tokyo, they were both suffering from ennui. They just happened to find each other to explore their own mutual issues in some foreign land. It wasn’t that they needed to find other Americans for validation, they needed to find someone else suffering from the same boredom and near depression. If Woody Allen had made this film, they would have spent all their time analyzing each other with too much psychobabble. Instead, they just wandered – the same way I would have in the same position.
Holy cow, I could go on and on, but I will stop now.
Someday I plan to do a post on why Marie Antoinette is a brilliant film, and why Coppola is an amazing director…
movie is ok
you can be bored anywhere
more intelligent you are more quickly you will become bored
it has nothing to do with culture around
even if you like exploring other cultures
there comes a time when you realize that what’s the point
they are all same human beings, only rituals they follow are different
.
let me know if there is a movie where a really bored person
is not looking for company of another equally bored person
he has become bored of this search for company too
and now is trying to solve his boredom alone
just finished
running on karma
.
starring andy lau, cecilia cheung
directed by johnnie to
.
my god
this is fascinating cinema
Vishrant – what an awfully cynical way of looking at the world! May I never feel this way. I find human life endlessly fascinating. If that makes me dumb, so be it.
It’s a character’s life in a hotel in Tokyo. He’s alone. He’s middle aged and he has hit (almost) rock bottom of his career. Even if it was otherwise, business trips to different countries IS and CAN become boring where one shuttles between a boardroom to the hotel room, if there is no prep, homework, personal money and desire to venture out into the alien city where people who communicate for 8 hours is at work after which they leave for their homes and you come back to your hotel room. Be it Tokyo or anywhere else.
I found the depiction very accurate, raw and very very close to reality…
Jahan – “racist???” – 20 years from now with so much more experience in life and seeing so many places, people, career… you will have a very different take on the movie.
@Oz: This is what I felt having watched it for the first time, and I am more than willing to give the film and myself another chance, and possibly change my opinion. But vis-a-vis the ‘racism’, maybe that is too strong a word, but I did find it offensive- the jibes at the Japanese were stretched to an extent where they became more disgusting than funny. Then again, that’s just my opinion. More on this later in a full post maybe- about Darjeeling Ltd and this.
it is the dumb people who are not fascinated by anything
they sleep walk through life
.
human life fascinates you
that’s enough proof of your intelligence
.
just this
that if by any chance
at some point
you feel that now human life no longer fascinates you
then don’t be sad
because human life is not the end of life
existence is abound with endless life
life is eternal
eternity is awaiting you
to fascinate you for eternity
.
think of life as co centric circles
smaller circle is in the bigger circle
that circle again is in bigger circle
and so on
.
human life is the innermost circle
.
all the spirituality is
how you break this circle
and jump in the realm of bigger circle
.
there is no end to these circles
that is what eternity means
it never begins
it will never end
it was always
and will be always
.
that is what ’sat’ means in “sat-chit-anand”
sat = sanatan = always
Absolutely. I had high expectation from the film and was thoroughly disappointed. I dont think it was offensive really… cultural caricatures are common in films and I dont think LIT was insulting in any way to the Japanese life and culture. But as a film, it is highly overrated.
A very curious peak into a couple of characters… agree with Oz above Jahan… 20yrs younger and I still feel it today shuttling between cities and checking into hotels, downing a few beers and trying to make sense of what I am doing.
Loved the way Sophia handles the way we think about ppl from various cultures. It’s a very common feeling, to just dismiss something new with a scorn… very very true.
The discussion is just so getting away from what the movie is about.
It’s just a story about 2 people bored in their lives for whatever reasons. They happen to meet, interact, connect at a certain level – why they are able to do so and how much being in an alien land affects this.
Vishrant, from what you have written it’s like no matter what I am always fascinated with life. How is this possible? I am human after all. To feel bored is so natural. To connect with another is. This definitely doesn’t mean that other aspects don’t enthrall. Of course they may do so but at that time there is something that is more important going on in my head. Hence no matter what, that affects me and I get bored. Overcoming this and moving ahead is another thing but this is so natural n kind of necessary for one. What you say is more like one just moving ahead – as you say, from circle to another – without getting affected. Thats so not possible. Thats not who we are.
(I’m not sure I’ve used words effectively for what I wanted to say – found it a little tough- but when I read the post I had to write.)
Oops. Moderators, please could you remove the first line. – ‘The discussion is just so getting away from what the movie is about.’
What I wrote was in ref to comment 11 and not the others. Sorry @ this….Thanks…
@ arthi
.
you forget one thing
the inner circle is IN the outer circle
.
jumping to the next cirlce
does not mean getting away from the previous circle
.
no body else can taste the food
the way a buddha can
if a buddha watch a movie
he will enjoy it the most
.
the message of the mystic is not to renounce this world
his plea is
that you are satisfied with this limited life
when there is so much more to it
.
a buddha sitting under his bodhi tree is not against life
he has nothing against cinema or disco or music or money
only
his sensibilities has grown so much
that just a blowing wind and and leaf swaying
is bliss
.
once some one asked hemingway how old he is
hemingway said 360 years
man was puzzled, he knew that hemingway is near about sixty
so he said – i know you are 60, how you are saying that you are 360 years old
hemingway said – because every moment i live much more than you
boredom
.
the ability that differentiate man from animal
.
no animal can be bored
a buffalo will eat same grass all her life
and will never feel bored
.
on this earth
only a human being can feel boredom
.
and that is the divine in him
.
when someone is bored
the only way out for him
is to grow in sensibility
.
a pair of shoes does not fascinate you
but they did fascinate van gough
- the sensibility
Vishrant, you are saying the same thing using different words. Of course one doesn’t leave one aspect for the other. That isn’t life.
What I meant was, dwelling at a particular point / level. When I said leaving one circle for another I meant that I am just moving on to the next level (circle) even though I do have remnants of the previous. This is not possible. I feel that at times, one stays back at a particular level. It takes time to move on. For whatever reasons. We just don’t move on. For how long? No clue. But one does. That is life.
This is what the story here tells us. @ these 2 people.
We are talking about people here. Not Buddha. Else these things wouldn’t exist. We all would have attained bliss. I don’t even think this film would exist. Neither this
post.
Yes, one has to grow in sensibility and will. But does that happen at a snap of a finger? Should it happen that way? Of course not. It does take time. And during that period we feel whatever comes to us – here boredom it is. We experience, learn and move on. And this period of ambiguity will always have to be there. You know, you talk about
concentric circles. There are gaps between them. What are these gaps? For me its these periods that help me make the transition / increase my sensib as you say. Its a period of feeling, understanding, learning, and then moving on.
This film just does that for me. I guess I too am getting repetitive if I write more. Getting lost in words then. This
is what comes to my head now. Nothing more.
Vishrant, your eloquent and poetic form of expression is lost in translation, especially for lesser souls like me
totally agree
watch good – better – best cinema
@Oz – He’s not a business traveler jaded with being a different place every week. He’s an actor. And apparently a good one, though slightly over the hill. He’s supposed to keenly observe the human experience.
She’s a stay at home wife who’s been in Tokyo for a while. She’s obviously an intelligent, curious person – towards the end, we see her take a trip to Kyoto to see ancient Japanese temples.
If place doesn’t matter, then would Francophile Sophia have set the same story in Paris? If this is about the alienation and ennui of two individuals outside of their context, then why is this film called “Lost in Translation” and set in Tokyo?
And why did Sophia think it was necessary to pack the film with every last cliche about Japanese society (karaoke session – check, kinky weird call girl – check, crazy talk show hosts – check).