Lost in Translation 
Lost in Translation: Review
Sunday 06.13.2004
alice ttlg || 12:21 AM
This was good - it's a slow movie but that's part of it, it's about time creeping along and you can't do anything about it, you're stuck there and you have to live thru it whether you like it or not. And sometimes you can find something or someone to make it easier, someone unexpected, the kind of person you'd never really get to know in the normal course of your everyday life.
It's like the whiskey Bill Murray's character drinks, that taste in the back of your mouth and with each sip, it gets smoother and smoother and that's how this movie goes. At first I was as bored and out of place as Bob and Charlotte are and then as they meet and gradually get to talking, it gets easier and draws me in slowly as they get drawn into each other.
It's beautifully shot, the cacophony of a strange country and a strange language, the lights of Tokyo night life coupled with the rain-washed daylight at a quiet Buddhist temple. The Japanese people that they meet by turns friendly and warm, and as strange and unintelligble as the American bimbo actress-celebrity singing karaoke in the hotel bar.
It's like flipping thru someone's vacation pictures, snapshots of various moments, disjointed and only somewhat connected by the repetition of familar faces, a sense of the surreal that becomes more real than their lives back home as the film progresses.
So have a whiskey, a Suntory whiskey, by watching this movie.
| Home |