i just watched a movie for the first time in a long time last night, and it was excellent. i give it 5 smilies.
lost in translation. it's the best performance by bill murray i've ever seen (even before i read the falling-over-themselves-to-fawn-over-him reviews). the female part is played by a very realistic beauty; a smart, lonely scarlet johannsen who looks like an awkward 10th grader one minute and a siren the next...very intriguing.
the movie is all about our efforts (and failures for the most part) in communicating to others our own needs, and with others about their own, in a particularly post-modern setting for these two characters--seemingly the only americans drowning in a Japan drawn so pop-art and jangly that even when you can understand what someone is saying it still doesn't make sense. Neon skyscapers screaming in light a foreign language that seems somehow more foreign than any other...reminding me of the definition of "absurd"...unable to be heard due to the sheer magnitude of unrecognizable transmission.
the sketches of murray's and johannsen's characters by comparison are spare and quiet and dark, all of which sofia coppola, the director, seems to have known would give the essentially isolated characters room to exude their difficulties rather than inundating us with words, words, words in what could have been a melodramatic film about the angst of (insert post-modern condition here...loneliness, meaninglessness, existential angst, ad nauseum). a bit more of a challenge for the viewer but much more rewarding as a piece of art.
and *lost in translation* doesn't stoop to make you love it either. coppola could have crafted an ending that left you feeling happy but hollow...like eating a whole pan of brownies...full of crap you know won't edify you in any conceivable way and therefore means you've wasted your time at the least and damaged you in some way at worst. but instead you get a feeling that ordinary human valor of some sort has occurred in front of you, if i can sound that corny. the end of the film wraps up--as neatly and poignantly as a poet would have dreamed of doing--the entire thematic premise of the film in a few lines that are inaudible to the viewer but which, like ivan illych's final thoughts, signify--and indeed, manifest--a profound transformative moment that can't help but leave you as altered, at least temporarily, as the characters themselves are.
lost in translation. it's the best performance by bill murray i've ever seen (even before i read the falling-over-themselves-to-fawn-over-him reviews). the female part is played by a very realistic beauty; a smart, lonely scarlet johannsen who looks like an awkward 10th grader one minute and a siren the next...very intriguing.
the movie is all about our efforts (and failures for the most part) in communicating to others our own needs, and with others about their own, in a particularly post-modern setting for these two characters--seemingly the only americans drowning in a Japan drawn so pop-art and jangly that even when you can understand what someone is saying it still doesn't make sense. Neon skyscapers screaming in light a foreign language that seems somehow more foreign than any other...reminding me of the definition of "absurd"...unable to be heard due to the sheer magnitude of unrecognizable transmission.
the sketches of murray's and johannsen's characters by comparison are spare and quiet and dark, all of which sofia coppola, the director, seems to have known would give the essentially isolated characters room to exude their difficulties rather than inundating us with words, words, words in what could have been a melodramatic film about the angst of (insert post-modern condition here...loneliness, meaninglessness, existential angst, ad nauseum). a bit more of a challenge for the viewer but much more rewarding as a piece of art.
and *lost in translation* doesn't stoop to make you love it either. coppola could have crafted an ending that left you feeling happy but hollow...like eating a whole pan of brownies...full of crap you know won't edify you in any conceivable way and therefore means you've wasted your time at the least and damaged you in some way at worst. but instead you get a feeling that ordinary human valor of some sort has occurred in front of you, if i can sound that corny. the end of the film wraps up--as neatly and poignantly as a poet would have dreamed of doing--the entire thematic premise of the film in a few lines that are inaudible to the viewer but which, like ivan illych's final thoughts, signify--and indeed, manifest--a profound transformative moment that can't help but leave you as altered, at least temporarily, as the characters themselves are.
