Nothing left to lose
Every so often, I head to Japan for work, much like the white people in the new Sofia Coppola movie Lost in Translation. (In fact, I’m leaving for two weeks there on Friday, will you miss me?) But when I saw that movie in a special pre-release screening for sycophants, I felt personally embarrassed. I wanted to turn to everyone in the theater and say, “Movies aren’t always this bad. Please do not stop seeing them forever.”
When I read about this upcoming work in Film Comment, I was inspired by the casting and the premise. I was a little nervous, because I felt that Coppola’s previous movie, the one about the dead girls, was empty of anything except a #21 orange filter and people staring at each other. Good news: she’s ditched the orange filter in this one, but she’s also managed to run into the ground Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, and the nation of Japan.
Mr. Murray, our poet laureate of sadness, and Ms. Johansson, the angsty It girl-to-be, sit around staring at each other sadly and Gen X-ish, respectively. There isn’t much dialogue, which is okay, because what there is is pretty facile. If you saw Rushmore, you’ll recognize the performance Mr. Murray is trying to give, but not the one he does, as he phones it in. Ms. Johansson, who made more sense to me as a fucked-up teenager in Ghost World than she does as a languorous sexpot (she kept reminding me of Ludivine Sagnier without the nudity) nonetheless seems right for the idea of this part. There just isn’t much part there beyond the thumbnail sketch.
There is, however, a certain amount of xenophobia. Sure, Japan is weird, but everyone in this movie is either a grinning corporate drone or a dyed-blonde metrosexual wannabe. Everyone except the white people, of course, who thankfully find each other. In a bar in the wee hours, of course. That’s the only part I could relate to.
But the reason I mention this here is because of the larger issues. Have we gotten to the point where people sitting around sadly in silence is considered profound? I recognize the importance of silence in conveying complex emotions, but I think it’s more of a crutch here (“imagine that they are interesting”) than a statement. Sort of like when Antonio Banderas appeared as an Italian filmmaker on Broadway. I asked a friend, “Is he going to pretend to have an Italian accent?” She replied, “No, I think we have to pretend.”
Ambiguity is not necessarily profundity. In that way, it’s profoundly clear that this movie sucks.
by Jack, September 21, 2003 4:50 PM | More from The Damned Human Race
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Very well made points!