If there is to be a theme, Lost in Translation is a sensate exploration of American isolationism. Of the loneliness that results when, becoming a celebrated jewel oneself as one in a global economic empire, the freedoms left to any man or woman is left undispensible.
Charlotte is a Harvard-graduated newlywed with too much time on her hands. In her own way, she has also fulfilled the dreams of youth – a philosophical dreamer elevated beyond the rat-race of establishing a career (unlike her husband).
Bill Murray plays a successful man, an actor who reaches around the world by virtue of his individualistic skill. In reaping his capitalist entitlements (food, women, a suite with luxurious facilities) the foreigness of Tokyo brings him to realize that simply learning the rules of the world is not enough to fulfill him. No amount of waking up on time, working enough to support a family and lifestyle could prevent this.
Given a second chance in Japan, he barely makes an effort to adapt or even explore, as Charlotte does.
The scene of him at the bar allowing the bartender to pick money from his hand shows that he doesn`t has not taken any time to learn about Japanese money. He deliberately makes fun of the locals’ English, despite their best efforts to adapt to a foreign American culture.
He keeps himself comfortably isolated in a context that is as familiar to him as possible – that of either the pampered hotel, or the film studio.
Bill and Charlotte never truly exchange names onscreen; the basis of their relationship is simply that they understand each other’s position, and find something common. Islands in a strange sea.
Sometimes I give up on analyzing movies. When I allow my mind to simply assimilate the them as experiences stochastically, constraining the analysis to the bounds of the cinematic world.
Garden State is one of these, and to a greater extent Lost in Translation.
There is no set path to life. We live, moment by moment, in a reflection of the past journeys of others, however systematized.
In Garden State, a predictable outcome would be that boy meets girl. Boy sleeps with girl. The end. In Lost in Translation, man would meet woman. Slowly, a friendship would turn to a romance forbidden. End of story would show mixed feelings about the simple duality between two lives, that of America and the isolated romances of the Pacific. No, it is not that predictably simplistic.
I enjoyed Lost in Translation for the realism that allowed me to reflect on how normal it is to feel awkward with life, how naturally there is so little to guide consequence that often we resort to craving the simplicity of the hyperreal. An episodically structured-and-framed world of hyperreal action or romance.
Experiencing the movie, my mind was entirely rooted on subjectivity of the director’s vision of the movie as an art piece, of expressionism in the context of the world stage. How does a tourist understand an environment? By re-realizing objects as novel in their foriegn context or meaning.
Here, silk prayers tied to a tree. There, neon advertisments for incomprehensible purposes.
Sometimes it is the foreigness that allows us to see every step of an artist’s journey. Sometimes, it is the artist that shows us this foreigness in the everyday mundane.
