JEFF KEATING
"Lost in Translation," the second effort from director Sofia Coppola
(her first was "The Virgin Suicides"), offers a small snapshot of the
world people can create when they feel as though it's them against
everyone else -- or, if not against everyone, trying to understand
and adjust to them.
And although the film tells the story of just one man and one
woman, its lessons can apply to much larger groups of people. The
citizens of Glendale and the foothills, for example.
"Lost in Translation," which opened this weekend at the Mann
Marketplace 4 and the UA La Canada Flintridge, features Bill Murray
as a movie star -- best credits long behind him -- who travels to
Tokyo to film a series of whiskey ads in exchange for a $2-million
paycheck. Stranger in a strange land that he is, and essentially
trapped in his luxury hotel between photo shoots, he strikes up a
wry, pensive -- and platonic, at least in a physical sense --
friendship with the very young wife (Scarlett Johansson) of a
photographer on assignment in Japan.
This isn't a movie review, so I won't go into the performances of
Murray or Johansson, both of whom are excellent, or wax poetic about
the cinema- tography and script, which are equal to the fine work
done by the actors. What I will say is that the friendship struck up
between the two characters is grounded in three things: wonder and
fear about their familiar yet unfamiliar surroundings (Tokyo, though
American in its neon bigness, comes across almost as another planet);
curiosity about someone from a different background than themselves
(Murray is middle-aged, world-weary and rich, and Johansson is none
of those things); and concerns about their individual futures.
If those three things don't also describe our changing communities
and the people who live in them, I don't know what does.
In "Lost in Translation," concern, fear and wonder bring the main
players closer together. Different as they are, they start to lean on
one another to navigate the foreign land in which they find
themselves, and to help one another figure out what comes next. It's
as though the handful of things they have in common are enough --
more than enough, really -- to overcome not only their personal
differences, but also the challenges posed by an environment wildly
different than the one they're used to.
Conversely, at a non-movie level, we often allow concern and fear
to keep us apart from our neighbors, especially when our backgrounds
