When I was in Japan for a couple of weeks a few years ago, I spent some time teaching a girl from one of the very nice families I stayed with some of the intricacies of English pronunciation. R vs. L was a problem for her, but so was S vs. SH. It was difficult to not get a fit of the giggles when I was trying very hard to get her to say “city” rather than “shitty”.
While sitting in a nice restaurant with her parents:
Me - “Ok, say it… CITY.”
Her - “Shitty.”
Me - “Nono! City.”
Her - “Shitty!”
Me - looks around nervously for Americans “Ci. Ty.”
Her - “City?”
Me - “Yes! Great! Perfect!”
Her - “Shitty.”
Me - “We’ll work on this later.”
I’m sure I made some hilarious errors, too, but everyone was polite enough not to tell me.
I think that the point about the way Japan and the Japanese are portrayed owes a lot to the perspective of the main characters, who are both in a strange spot mentally. They aren’t connected very strongly to anyone or anything during the movie. You’ll notice that the other American characters seem much less confused by Japan. I don’t think this is because they understand it any better, in fact they probably understand it less, rather I think they are just going on with their lives and basically ignore the differences.
The movie reminded me of what it felt like to be in a quite different culture. You are often confronted with your stereotypes and you just don’t understand much of the time (and much of the time you know very clearly that you don’t understand). Or at least that was my experience.
In that regard the movie was quite good. I don’t think this entirely excuses the stereotype jokes nor the sometimes shallow exoticization. These things exist in the film as something worth criticizing.
I wouldn’t say it insulted the Japanese but I have to wonder what’s so great about this film. It was funny in parts… that’s about it.
May be the standards of film-making have been systematically lowered to a point where a cute little film comes across as moving/touching/great/what-have-you.
I don’t think LiT insults japanese as much as it insults the audience. This film sucked, and anyone who sees it based on last night’s award for best screenplay is going to be disappointed.
I rented the film yesterday, and gave it up halfway, because it’s a dull character study of two uninteresting people. Normally I have no compunctions endorsing a plotless story, as long as the people being examined are likable, quirky, or just generally interesting. But LiT is so boring I ended up watching the Oscars.
During that broadcast it was mentioned several times that Lost in Translation took only 27 or 28 days to shoot. Given what occurs, I feel that’s several weeks too long.
Well I respectfully disagree with you. I watched it with no preconceptions, and I loved it. I spent a few months in Japan, and my experiences in Tokyo were very similar to those portrayed in the movie. Especially the nights out in Rappongi and Shinuku. I was bewildered, surrounded by benign alienation. Sure, the movie exaggerated this feeling somewhat, but then it is a work of fiction.
I got into an argument on another board over this, some guy was a representative of a group claiming LiT was racist and was petitioning the acadamy voters to not vote for it. (now that it won an Oscar i hope he feels like a failure). His main argument was that LIT was full of stereotypical representatives of Japanese people. However, his group supported Last Samurai, a much much much much much more offensive movie, which i beleive was because of Watanabe’s acadamy nomination. So basically my feelings on those groups are they are full of hypocritical fools.
LIT speaks to anyone who has ever been lost in a foriegn place, be it Japan, Africa, or California. It was the best picture last year, and lost only because the Acadamy waited until the last installment of LOTR to honor Jackson, which is why Coppula got the Screenplay Oscar, despite much of the film being Murray improvising.
I spent virtually all of my adult life on college campuses. This has meant that I have worked with people from all over the planet. I have had numerous “conversations” with people whose English was minimal at best. (And I barely speak English as a first language.) I have had to ask thousands of times for someone to repeat what they said. The first time I heard an Indian pronounce “Hemoglobin”* I was completely baffled. Over the years I got used to it. For people from some well represented countries, I don’t even hear their accents at all.
To me, many people have accents. That’s part of life. It would be unrealistic to show people in movies without accents if they should have them. There is not a shred of racism in LiT regarding language.
As to the other culture issues. There’s a lot of positive things shown about Japan. A lot. Big and small. Keep in mind that the wacky talk show host is a real Japanese TV talk show host. (Yes, his show is a parody, but he does actually do that on TV.) If a Japanese movie had someone being interviewed by Jiminy Glick, would that be anti-American???
SC has spent quite a bit of time in Japan and parts of the movie are based on her experiences there. Please do not be surprised if the famous daughter of a famous filmmaker has a different experience in Japan from other people who have been there. Where you go, who you meet, etc. are all going to be very different. Throw me into Tokyo and it’ll be like a chapter from “Cryptonomicon.”
And Barbarian: So the movie was way, way over your head. And for some strange reason you decided this meant is was bad? Hardly a convincing argument. I have a post about that sort of thing in another LiT thread.
LiT doesn’t insult the Japanese in the least. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in Japan (admittedly, in the Kansai, not so much in Tokyo), and, yeah, Sofia Coppola captured how it feels to be a foreigner in Japan. So mcuh goes by you that you don’t comprehend. And, yes, that’s not all that much of a parody of Japanese television (or Korean TV, for that matter).
I can’t wait to see this movie, though since I won’t have access to tv for 4-6 months it’ll have to wait. But yeah, after living in Japan for the past 2 years it’s something to definitely see.
That’s overstating things a tad, don’t you think? I suspect that the ratio of people who see the movie because it won an Oscar and are disappointed will be roughly similar to the ratio of people who saw it before it got nominated and were disappointed.
And they will continue to be in the minority. While the movie certainly does not have universal appeal, the critical and popular reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.
On the other side of the equation:
Just because someone doesn’t like a movie you like doesn’t make them dumber or less educated than you. It just means they’ve got different tastes.
Don’t be fooled by the screen name ftg. The film that’s over my head does not exist, and is part of the reason that my studies for both of my post-secondary degrees spent an inordinate amount of time concentrating on film and television. (Officially, that’d be a DEC in Creative Arts, and a BA double major cum laude in Broadcast Journalism and Communication Studies.)
To cap it off, I’ve been to foreign countries where I don’t speak the local language, and my former home (Vancouver) was full of Asians hanging out to learn English. I’ve been caught in the middle of 3000 Koreans taking to the streets to celebrate World Cup wins, so I easily have enough commonalities of experience to ‘get’ LiT, if it had anything meaningful or interesting to say.
It doesn’t.
Lost In Translation is, quite simply, a bad film that fails to grab the audence’s attention. Yes, it does portray some interesting portions of life in Japan, especially from a foreigner’s viewpoint, but it does so in an impressively dull manner.
I watched LiT because it had a certain amount of buzz around it, and it just happened that when I made my first post to this thread on Monday, mentioning the Oscars seemed timely. However, since the award bequeathed to said film is for best screenplay, potential viewers expecting scintillating dialogue, or even mildly amusing quips concerning a character’s fate, will be disappointed.
Unfortunately, LiT is a sophomoric wank of a movie, especially compared to The Virgin Suicides.
That would actually be almost entirely untruthful. Not the bits about it being bad or dull, which are subjective, but the bit where you say it fails to grab the audience’s attention. It failed to grab your attention, which is fine, but the fact of the matter is, the film has met with wild critical and popular success. A lot, if not most, of the people who saw this film enjoyed it. That you did not is no reflection on your taste or intellect, but please stop trying to conjure popular support that does not exsist.
So what you are saying is you are an elitist snob when it comes to movies. Great, like we don’t have enough of them on this board already.
How wonderful for you
just because it doesn’t speak to you…
And the bashing of a popular movie in favor of a more obscure film from the director commences. I’ve seen this dance many times. Thank goodness Coppola doesn’t have a whole selection of films for you to start mentioning to try to show us how you are better than us for knowing a movie title.
Demonstrably untrue, as there was a good bit of laughter in the audience I was in, and there is that troubling fact about the three Oscar nominations and a win for best original screenplay.
Your believing something does not inherently make it true.
First of all, FWIW, Lost in Translation is NOT about Japan. It is about alienation, and any place foreign and unfamiliar to the main characters would have done nicely.
Second, the representations of Japanese pronunciation of English are entirely accurate. I have been teaching English in Tokyo to dozens of Japanese for more than a year now, and the severity of accent varies greatly from person to person. Some Japanese have very little trouble with English pronunciation, and others have accents so much worse than the ones represented in the film that it is really impossible to understand them half the time.
Third, I would like to state that Yoko Akashi has her head planted firmly up her ass. Say what you will about the bad behavior of the main characters in Lost in Translation, but any opinion that begins by finding offense in an opening shot of a female bottom immediately loses credence with me.
I strongly disagree with this view. I think that Bill Murray’s “hosts” could be more accurately called “handlers.” Allow me to explain:
Until last year, I worked for a large Japanese airline, helping them to recruit and train their first European flight attendants. I have been in and out of Japan for the past ten years and I speak the language fluently, so it has been a long time since I keenly noticed all the things here that might strike a newcomer as oddities. That’s why it was fascinating for me to see Japan again through the eyes of our European trainees. Everything was so strange to them, as it could no longer be strange to me.
These trainees did not live in Japan as guests or travelers. Their Japanese superiors expected something from them. They were here to be handled, not to be hosted. This created a lot of tension over unclear expectations on both sides. Bill Murray’s uncomfortable TV spot shoot with the overbearing Japanese director is a bit exaggerated, but it captured the experience of our trainees quite well. You are ordered to do things you don’t understand. You’re never sure you’re getting the full translation. In Japan especially, you are forced to adhere to a seemingly unreasonable and overly rigorous schedule, herded around from place to place with no readily clear purpose.
When you are a guest or a business partner, there is not quite so much pressure to perform. But when you are supposed to be doing a job but surrounding circumstances appear to be hindering you, tension levels rise and it is not always possible to be as polite as you ought to. Bill Murray’s character might have been a bit ruder than I would have been, but I don’t think his behavior was unacceptable.
Anyway, I’ve talked long enough. I was just so surprised that another person with so much experience comparable to my own had such a different take on the realism (or lack thereof) of the film. Contrary to you, haj, I was impressed by how accurate it was. Ain’t opinions funny?
I would say at the time when I was watching this film it was ok. But thinking back on it a few weeks later it really stands out as being quite dull and nothing much happens and I dont care about it at all. As someone above stated already, it is a pile of wank.
