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 Tuning into Tokyo Getting "Lost in Translation" with Sofia Coppola
"Beauty is more valuable than science," Oscar Wilde supposedly
observed, "or it requires no explanation."
A movie like Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" resists
explanation, since its magical, melancholy moods are a triumph of
image,
music and performance, with plot and suspense a distant, superfluous
concern. The writer-director's second feature is a feat of levitation,
contemplation, mood and love, love, love--a playful, romantic meeting
of
two lonely souls of different generations (Scarlett Johansson, Bill
Murray), lost in Tokyo, deprived of their indifferent mates, adrift in
an empire of signs without meaning.
There's a vernacular grace to the pair's wanderings across the
gaudy topography of Tokyo that's reminiscent of the best of Wim
Wenders' work, in which a scene could take place only in a particular
room or street, or against a particular dazzling yet puzzling urban
backdrop. "Lost in Translation" has the dreamy pace of memory as
well,
as if only the most heightened sensations are recalled and the boring
bits fall away. Murray plays a fiftyish actor, whose career and
marriage
are in decline, being paid $2 million to perform in a whisky ad;
Johansson is the tagalong wife of a photographer on a shoot who likely
neglects her even at home. Adrift in Tokyo's Park Hyatt, with views of
the city starkly reminiscent of "Blade Runner," they meet. It's not
a
May-December romance, but something more elusive, more transitory.
"Their relationship was more like a friendship. I didn't want it to
be a typical kind of cliché," Coppola, visiting Chicago, tells me.
"Lost in Translation" has a quiet authority, much like the filmmaker
in person. The 32-year-old writer-director is tiny, incredibly
soft-spoken and resistant to describing her work. Yet she has the sort
of presence you want to trust implicitly. She describes the movie's
genesis as trips she took to Tokyo, first as a tourist and then
promoting her Milk Fed clothing line, which is sold primarily in Japan.
In terms of style, she says, "The starting point was the impressions
of
being there, the blurry neon. The music helps--kind of dreamy--it's
like you're on another planet. And I wanted something that I thought
was romantic, not something that was supposed to be romantic. Like, a
lot of movies that are supposed to be romantic are kind of corny."
Thematically, "Being at that point, in your early twenties," Coppola
says you ask yourself, "What am I going to do with my life, what kind
of person am I going to be? That confusion is amplified by jetlag in
this really foreign culture. Your visual impressions in a half-awake
state are just not the same as your reality."
The movie is similarly jetlaggy. "We were never precise about what
day we were on. It's like when you're on a trip or you look back on a
week in your life where all this stuff happens, it's a blur. Was it
three or four days? I wanted to be impressionistic." The image-rich
editing reflects that choice. "I don't think it's a conscious thing.
It's an idea about fleeting movements, moments that can be enchanting
or beautiful but part of what makes them great is they don't last."
There are shots that are technically "incorrect," but are lovely in
their own right, such as a scene both hilarious and touching, when
Murray does karaoke to several songs, including Roxy Music's "More
Than This." "Yeah, there are other shots, like at the end, where
she's out of focus, and that's the nature of how we were shooting. I
was inviting it to be a little homemade or sloppy; it was more about
the
feeling. Instead of losing a moment by being precise, I wanted to
capture what was going on."
The film opens with a dreamy, provocative shot: a horizontal frame
of Johansson's lower back, in translucent panties pink like cherry
blossoms. It almost seems a provocation as well, like "Hey, look, I'm
not a guy directing this, I can do this..." "And you can't?" she
finishes the sentence, laughing. "I never thought of it like that. I
just wanted to have a moment, a flash of her femininity before you get
into his story, to hint at her. Coppola discovered a photorealist
painter she admired, whose work is "of all these butts in underwear
and
when I saw his book, I said, that would look good as a title sequence.
"And I always liked the "Lolita" title sequence, just her foot.
[So it's] abstract and iconic and feminine. And later you see her
hanging out in the pink underwear. It's just supposed to be an
impression of her, if [the film] is all memories. I thought it would
just cut nicely--to see pink underwear and then neon. These movies are
collages. I didn't really have an intellectual reason. You just do
what
you like and not think about it too much." "Lost in Translation" opens Friday.
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