Lost in Translation (2003) There is a lot of buzz in Hollywood about Kathryn Bigelow and her chance to be the first female to win an Oscar for Best Director, but had it not been for a little film by Peter Jackson known as The Return of the King I like to think that Sophia Coppola would have already won that award for her wonderful 2003 film Lost In Translation. Subdued and under-stated, the plot of the film is not really the point so much as the interaction of two characters both at a crossroads of life who happen to meet in the perfect setting of a far-away country, in this case Japan.
Bill Murray as an aging and seemingly indifferent actor (Bob Harris) is in a stale marriage and a stale career (he is in Japan for the two million dollars he will be paid to shoot a whiskey commercial) meets a young and disillusioned Scarlett Johansson (Charlotte) while having a drink in at the hotel bar. Newly married to a budding star photographer, Charlotte is already having a very young mid-life crisis, as she struggles to understand who she is and what she wants. She likes photography, sort of as a pet-project, but she doesn’t really know much else. While her husband is off living a rock-star life she concedes she doesn’t even know who she married. The meeting of these two lost souls in a foreign country under circumstances that are both beautiful and harsh is what makes this film a masterpiece.
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