OK, 20-something chick making a movie about 20-something chick trying to find herself and all. OK, that’s cool. Except that we’ve got a 50-something dude as the mentor. Now, however smart the director may be, there’s a big difference in the way that a 50 year-old and a 20 year-old find meaning in their lives (or so I’ve been told).
This film ended up being about a) crazy parties/gather your rosebuds b) hating your boyfriend/desperately trying to tell them you love them even though you don’t and c) telling you what you want to hear to make you feel good/get you in bed (without actually letting you know what the whisper at the end of the film was).
I saw more in the movie than that, but I understand that its not a movie for everyone.
When I saw it in theatres, I loved that movie…LOVED it.
Then we bought it and watched it again and I was bored out of my mind. I don’t know if I’ll actually sit and watch it again. I think its a good movie, but one a person only needs to see once.
I think part of the problem many people have about Lost In Translation is that they are looking for some plot or some deep message. There is none. It’s a slice of life film about two people who are alienated both by their environment and by their situation in life. From what I’ve read, the shooting script was minimal, many of the scenes were improvised, and it’s obvious that a lot of the scenerios were drawn from the life of the director/writer (Sophia Coppola). It’s probably the movie that has made the best use of Bill Murray’s talents since Groundhog Day. If this movie is indicative of Ms. Coppola’s talents, she is as good a director as she is a lousy actress.
I think of it as a modern analog of Roman Holiday. And I think the scene in the end, where Murray whispers something to Johansson, is one of the classiest endings to a film in years. It took some guts to end the film on such an ambiguous, but realistic note, just as Roman Holiday ends with Gregory Peck giving up his story on the Princess and walking away at the end.
YMMV. But try watching it without looking for a plot or a meaning. Just, uh, be in the moment.
What I saw as the biggest flaw in the movie was that at the end, I just didn’t give a flying fuck what it was about. I wasn’t interested in the plot and I didn’t give a shit about the characters. A movie with a boring plot and boring characters is a bad movie. It doesn’t matter how deep and meaningful and full of message it is. It’s still a bad movie. And this was a bad movie.
The best part of the movie for me was that it captured the feel and isolation that these two characters felt – the jet lag, the foreign land with weird food and strange customs, absolutely nobody to talk to. The sparse dialog, the hotel lighting, the disjointed feel of the night out and jumpy plot accentuated that. Because they were able to reach out – and it seemed that both of them had trouble with that in all aspects of their lives – everything got better. Their dysphoric, jet lagged state, the cold hotel in Japan only heightened what they were both feeling at the core, and therefore put them in an emotional state which enabled changed. There, IMHO was little mentor/mentee relationship there; they were both messed up, even though Bill Murray had a bit more experience at being so.
Sorry, I agree with the OP. For many of us, spending $7.50 to watch aimless meanderings of unsympathetic characters who undergo no changes or growth, solve no problems nor provide any useful insights is a sad waste of time. I felt about it the way Roger Ebert felt about John Cassavetes’ Husbands
Of course, YMMV.
Well, I guess when it comes to divying stuff up, you get Godard and I’ll take Coppola.
To bad for you, though. Tonight there’s a double feature of Godard at the New Beverly Cinema; Band Of Outsiders and A Woman Is A Woman. I was (slightly) tempted to see the former, as it’s such a classic, but instead, I made lasagna.
I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it. I probably won’t see it again. It just didn’t seem like a film designed to evoke a strong emotional response. More like, “Hey, life can be like that sometimes. I need a coke refill.”
But I did love every scene with Bill Murray because I just love Bill Murray.
Slightly off-topic but on a related note, I also felt this way about Amores Perros, which I recently watched. Both seemed more like a documentary of everyday failure and coping than a typical movie with a resolution. I think they both may have been somewhat depressing only because we’re socialized to expect a movie to wrap things up in two hours, and niether did.
I saw it and while I got what it was about, It didn’t do much for me. I guess because I didn’t really see how Japan was any wierder or more isolating then anywhere else. Sure, there’s a different language and he’s lonely, but frankly, Tokyo(at least the one in the movie) really isn’t that different then any other huge city on earth. If it had been, maybe I would have found the movie much more interesting then I did.
I concede it was a well directed and well made movie, and should have been interesting. Despite that, it just didn’t do anything for me and just seemed dull. I’ve actually created a mental catagory for such movies. It now contains:
*Lost in Translation
Ray
The Hours *
All well made movies, but all rather dull and boring(IMHO).
Hands down, Lost in Translation was the most boring movie I’ve ever seen EVER. Yeah, yeah, raw character development might be enough for some people, but I need plot. Or at the very least, interesting dialogue. Or something. Something besides endless shots of some stupid hotel bar. SOMETHING. At least, maybe, have the characters go through some kind of change? An epiphany? And about that character development: if it’s so great, then why didn’t I feel anything for the characters? I neither hated them nor liked them. They were a big blank for me. I know their “blankness” is supposed to be a comment on the vacuousness of our society but the thing is, I don’t want to see an accurate portrayal of two self-obsessed people because I can see them any time in real life. I want to see characters I can have an opinion on, who can excite my anger or love or hatred or pity. The two characters in this film elicited no emotional reaction from me at all. Hell, I can’t even remember their names.
God, what a waste of film and time. I truly mourn the loss of my two dollar rental fee.
Ambiguous? They knew that they’d have to return to their normal lives. They made a connection, but not enough to leave their signifigant others and hook up with each other.
