Lost (and found again) in Japan

Charlotte (Scarlett Johannson) is a recently-married Yale graduate, fighting insomnia in a Tokyo hotel bar while her photographer husband is out on assignment. Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a faded movie star from the ‘70s in Japan to endorse a local whiskey for $2 million. "The good news is, the whiskey works," Harris announces, raising a glass.

The two are an unlikely pair of lost romantics in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Films about couples thrown together by chance are often the most poignant, especially when the pair end up going their separate ways. Add an exotic locale and you have a mysterious third character that somehow echoes the intangible nature of human relationships. Think of classics like Casablanca, or Bridges of Madison County. More recently, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), in which separate travelers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy decide to explore Vienna for one night then board separate trains the following morning, provides a suitable companion piece to Lost in Translation.

Despite director Coppola’s strong Hollywood connections, this small, well-crafted film has got "indie" written all over it, from the Kevin Shields guitar to the opening shot of Johannson’s curved derriere in repose.

The tone of the first half hour perfectly captures what it’s like to be caught in the amber fluid of jetlag. Slow reaction shots establish that Charlotte and Bob are not firing on all cylinders: they seem dazed, disconnected, and gravitate to the hotel’s bar like tireless moths to a flame around 4 a.m.

Travelers will recognize the familiar sense of timeless stopovers, sitting in endless lobbies, visiting Asian locales that never seem to sleep.

The two Americans get to talking, perhaps because two people lost in a foreign land can find comfort in seeing it through each other’s eyes. They do boy-girl things together, though their relationship lies on the precipitous border between mentor-pupil and if-only romantic. Both are married, though it takes Bob’s 25 years of marital experience to offer this perspective to the young Charlotte: "Well, you sleep away a third of your life, so that really makes it 16 years and change..."

Both actors do remarkable, subtle work here. Murray takes his familiar wiseass persona and imbues it with all the gravitas his entire career has promised. It may be the role of his lifetime (though Oscar voters went with the more dependable Sean Penn). Johannson is a master at playing Murray’s moods, and though they never go beyond the kiss or the hug, their chemistry is leagues beyond most manufactured Hollywood pairings (not to mention real-life pairings, such as J.Lo and Ben Affleck).

The movie takes off once Harris suggests a "prison break": the two escape the hotel bar and venture out into the Tokyo night. They visit hip Tokyo music clubs (a Pizza of Death T-shirt is prominently displayed), dash through Pachinko parlors, smoke, drink, dance, and sing in a karaoke bar whose catalogue runs exclusively from 1977 to 1982, the perfect punk/early new wave years. As Charlotte sings the Pretenders’ coquettish Brass in Pocket, and Bob attempts Bryan Ferry’s croon-ish More Than This, they realize something is happening beyond the surreal beauty enveloping them: they are becoming deeply connected. "Let’s never come back to this place," Charlotte later says of Japan, "because it’ll never be this much fun."

Coppola, 32, had previously made the moody, stylish Virgin Suicides, but this was her first script, and the film was shot in a quick 27-day dash through the Shibuya district. Justly honored with an Oscar, Coppola’s screenplay balances humor, sadness and that strange in-between feeling humans have, and often share, with one another. In more pretentious hands, the film could have been awful, impenetrable gloom or existential nonsense. But Coppola acknowledges she had a "muse" which kept her writing on the ground: Bill Murray, whose cynical, world-weary tone shaped a generation of film comedy from the late-‘70s to early ‘80s (Stripes, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters). Later films demonstrated his range and restraint (Groundhog Day, Rushmore), but it’s easy to see how Murray’s wry influence filtered across the pages of Lost in Translation. It’s impossible to say what bits Murray improvised, but his tone provides the perfect foil to Johannson’s searching, slightly "mean" take on the world around her.

And if one probes deeper, Charlotte is an obvious stand-in for the young female director, whose dabbling in film (remember Godfather III?), fashion and celebrityhood have given her a tough yet vulnerable skin. This would make Charlotte’s self-absorbed workaholic husband (played by Giovanni Ribisi) a dead ringer for Coppola’s estranged hubby Spike Jonze. Just speculating, but that blonde airhead actress who insinuates herself into their company might even be a doppelganger of… Cameron Diaz, who worked with Jonze on Being John Malkovich.

Fortunately, none of this juicy gossip matters much to the overall texture of Lost in Translation, one of the most non-Hollywood movies to be nominated for Best Picture in years, maybe decades. Murray, Johannson and Coppola concoct a rare Hollywood oddity: a love story that never gets between the sheets, never rides on clichés and never sinks to the expected formula. And the third character, so essential to films like this, is Japan itself, represented in urban nightscapes and train rides through Kyoto. Buddhist temples, high-tech gadgets and a stunning golf course overlooking Mt. Fuji are just some of the sights Coppola captures to make her locale part of the story. Even those who haven’t been to Japan will be lost in its strange, exotic beauty.