Originally Posted July 6th, 2010

On reflection, Lost in Translation has about as short a plot description as you can manage for a 100-minute movie. Guy goes to Japan, guy meets girl, guy and girl explore Tokyo, guy leaves. There's not much all that much to the plot, but that's not to say that nothing happens. Director Sophia Coppola seems content to let her film meander about, almost purposelessly, but it’s a wandering experience built on characters and locations with entrancing magnetism.

Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, an aging movie star whose career and marriage are passed their prime. The latest stop on his star's descent is a commercial shoot in Japan, an embarrassment perhaps only known to him, as every handler, hotel worker or fan that enters his orbit still glad-hands him like his best years happened only yesterday. His wife sends him carpet swatches halfway around the world to make sure his study has the right shade of burgundy. Bob accepts his life with a sarcasm that’s sadder than it is biting, telling jokes to an audience that doesn’t speak his language. The salad days are behind him and it seems he’s all laughed out. So in essence, Bob is Bill Murray, which is a good thing, because Bill Murray is really great at playing Bill Murray.

Most performances are based on the actor disappearing into the part, but here, Murray’s performance is all the more affecting because you feel like you’re watching him as opposed to a character. Barflies and passers-by approach him and gush over how much they love his work. He sees his faced plastered across skyscrapers and vehicles. The viewer has to wonder how many times such things have happened to Murray in real life, and how it must feel to be constantly reminded of your public persona. Even the names of the actor and character are suspiciously similar. As Harris, Murray brings the kind of honesty and vulnerability that make it obvious why Coppola wouldn’t have made the film without him.

Murray’s counterpart is Charlotte (Johansson), a young philosophy graduate dealing with an equally lifeless marriage. She jokes about Bob’s midlife crisis even though she’s hit hers a few decades too early. Charlotte is part of a generation of creatives who are given the world on a platter, but can’t seem to find their place in it. She’s self-critical as a writer, and wryly observes that being a photographer is just a phase all girls go through, “like horses”. There are numerous shots of Charlotte staring out of her hotel window at the Tokyo cityscape, looking for something, even if she's not sure what that something is yet.

Self-discovery in a foreign land is an enticing little fantasy. The idea of breaking out of one's established culture by absorbing the best parts of another is what kept Eat, Pray, Love on bestseller lists for three years. Coppola recognizes and attacks such an impractical solution to personal identity with both humour and frankness. The idea of fast-food cultural consumption is best satirized via an oblivious young starlet played by Ana Faris, who incorporates aspects of Japanese culture into her identity with seemingly little understanding of what they actually mean. When Charlotte admits to feeling nothing after watching a Japanese ceremony, foreign religion being the sort of fashionable thing sightseers pick up like a fake accent, it becomes clear that the setting of the film is merely incidental; this is a film about connecting with people, not places.

With so much of the actual developments happening internally, the real action in Lost in Translation plays out in the repartee between Bob and Charlotte, which starts with the usual complaints about American-Japanese culture clash. Bob cracks jokes about Japan’s food and language while Charlotte seems to be the only person capable of talking to Bob Harris the person instead of Bob Harris the movie star. Coppola writes maybe one or two too many of these “ain’t Japan weird” scenes, but they reinforce the alienation of the characters and how much of a relief one another’s company is. Their conversations gradually become less sweetly sardonic and more personal the longer the two are together . In the film’s most pivotal scene, the pair lay in bed side by side as Charlotte confesses to being stuck in life, with Bob giving advice as best he can. Coppola is content to just let camera hang over them as Charlotte stares up at the hotel ceiling, which doesn't seem so bland and empty when you're sharing it with the right person.

It’s easy to see where the film’s setup could lead, but thankfully, Coppola knows exactly what her movie is about. Her characters have emotional problems and they need an emotional respite, not a physical one. Whatever amount of sexual tension there is for the viewer to decide, Charlotte’s looks serving mostly as a contrast to Bob’s, her baby blues opposite his pale, weary eyes. Their age difference is largely inconsequential, save for some ribbing at Bob’s expense, and in place of a May-December romance, we get a friendship between two people at the same place in different seasons of their lives.

The other real star of Lost in Translation is Japan, which is a constant marvel to watch. The muted tones of the hotel seem a paradox when housed in the otherwise vibrant downtown of Tokyo. When Bob first enters the city, there’s a childlike fascination in his face as he stares out at a city that’s half New York, half circus. As the leads share drinks in a bar early on, the bright lights of the Shinjuku ward broadcast the sleepless activity just outside. The frenetic neon sprawl of the city is juxtaposed with a trip to Kyoto which is almost otherworldly in its tranquility. There’s a regimented pace to each set piece, almost as if the camera is acting as a tour guide, pinpointing all the major highlights. Japan is captured with such loving detail that it’s hard to think about the film being set anywhere else, despite the story's freeform nature.

Coppola’s film has no great dramatic twist, and instead just focuses on how two very sad people make each other’s lives a little more bearable. Yet there’s a cruel aftertaste to every laugh shared between Bob and Charlotte, because it’s known from the beginning that this is a relationship that isn’t meant to last. When the two finally do say goodbye, it’s a moment of almost unparalleled bittersweetness. For a film to make you feel anything by the end is an achievement, but Lost in Translation manages to stir your emotions on two fronts, leaving you heartbroken at the sight of such a beautiful friendship ending, but also joyful, because you got to experience it.

5 out of 5

Directed by Sophia Coppola

2003, USA

It’s pretty incredible that The Avengers is an actual movie and that it came out in theatres today. How many successful movies have been made by combining two separate franchises, let alone four? Comic books have cross-pollination ingrained in their DNA, particularly Marvel’s, but it was hard to imagine an Avengers movie as being anything other than a cash-in starring a bunch of easily affordable no-names playing some of the biggest names in comics. So when Marvel decided to give each hero their own film so as to set-up the characters ahead of time and actively build towards this one amazing-mega-ultra-team-up, it showed an actual commitment to the idea of turning a super-group of superheroes into the kind of event movie it deserved to be. Getting geek icon Joss Whedon to write and direct the whole thing seemed itself almost too good to be true.

Yet here we are, four years after The Avengers was first teased at the end of Iron Man, with the greatest convergence in cinematic entertainment, pretty much ever, ready to blow audiences away. So, how is it? Well... it’s good, quite good even. That might sound reductive but the fact that The Avengers doesn’t collapse horribly beneath its own ambitions is an achievement unto itself. We have the stars and co-stars of four separate blockbuster franchises all stuffed into one single picture. Robert Downey Jr. is as rakish as ever playing billionaire Tony Stark, who dons the crimson and gold armour of Iron Man once more, but this time he’s joined by supersoldier-turned fish out of water Captain America (Chris Evans), fresh from a nasty plane crash-related hibernation. There’s also Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the warrior prince from another planet who wields Shakespearean verse and a nasty hammer in equal measure, as well as the big green guy himself, The Hulk, being kept in check by Marvel newcomer Mark Ruffalo as the giant’s low-key scientist alter-ego, Bruce Banner.

But wait, there’s more! Increasingly prominent S.H.I.E.L.D director Nick Fury gives Samuel L. Jackson greater opportunity to give grim looks from his one good eye, and has a new assistant (Cobie Smulders) to boot. Superhero scout and franchise connective tissue Agent Phil Coulson continues trying to get his ragtag team of metahumans together, and Thor’s scientist pal Dr. Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) is in tow as well. Then there’s the pair of assassin types, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who’ve been promoted from cameos to full-time world savers. Phew. Even at an arguably excessive 140 minutes, there is a lot going on in The Avengers, with no less than a dozen characters to introduce, both to each other, and audiences still a bit foggy on which one’s the time-displaced WWII vet and which one’s the Norse god.

Despite all the necessary groundwork laying that would hamstring the film’s leading up to it, The Avengers still has so much to get viewers up to speed on that it makes for a talky opening hour and a half. All the more reason to be thankful that it’s Whedon filling in the speech bubbles, as while his direction is clean and focussed, it’s his words that the movie really needed. Rather than settling for a glossy, one-shot crossover, great effort is made to develop the relationship each hero has with the others, while simultaneously maintaining the personalities established in each solo ventures before bringing them into the greater world of super-dom as a whole.

Whedon keeps things light, if not always brisk, with his trademark brand of self-aware humour, including more than a few riffs on costuming, which is funnier when coming from a guy wearing stars ‘n stripes pajamas. Getting everyone to play nice together is the story’s real conflict, as such varying powers and personalities create plenty of friction aboard S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fancy new flying helicarrier. So once Thor’s mischievous brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) steals the Tesseract, a cosmic MacGuffin that’s been popping up all over the Marvel movie universe, with the intent of leading an extraterrestrial army to earth’s front door, the real threat is whether the heroes be able to survive each other long enough to save anybody else.

It leads to more than a few surprise turns to the established Marvel formula. There’s an emotional and political murkiness throughout, as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s intentions are rarely transparent, and the personal conflicts bear out into much more globally conscious ones. The final act is as action-heavy as ever, with a full-blown intergalactic war ripping apart downtown Manhattan, and these setpiece closers were often the weakest link in the previous efforts, but here, it’s the culmination of 10 hours worth of set-up, so the catharsis is almost unparalleled. It’s a whole lot of CG destruction by monsters whose motives are about as vague as their species name, but it doesn’t matter because holy crap, Hulk just punched a mecha-baleen whale in the face! And wow, Thor just chip-shot an Acura into five aliens! With such a diverse array of badasses, the action beats switch fast but hit hard, even at the 2-hour mark. It’s raw spectacle, pure and simple, but because so much care has been put into making us love who’s putting on the show, it makes for one hell of a pay-off.

And through it all Whedon has, quite improbably, found a way to make every member of the all-star line-up relevant and matter. Hawkeye’s bow and arrow looks pretty measly when compared to the 8-foot tall Hulk, but his accuracy helps out in plenty of situations where smashing can’t. Perhaps most surprising is Johansson as Black Widow, who showed up in Iron Man 2 mostly just as eye candy, but now gets to quip and kick-ass along with everybody else. The team spirit that the Avengers is based on manages to not just survive, but invigorate the big screen translation, and you’ll know it once you see the requisite but charming after-credits sequence (of which there are two, so be sure to stick around). The story itself is simple and occasionally contrived (true to comics, mind-control is a big factor), but it’s built on a foundation of wonderful characters whose interactions within that story are what keep you engaged, be they flashy or funny.

It might seem odd to end talking about another comic franchise but the recently released final trailer for The Dark Knight Rises will likely play before your screening of The Avengers. It gives a stark comparison between what Christopher Nolan is doing with Batman and what Marvel has done with The Avengers. While Nolan wants to create a case for artistic filmmaking within the blockbuster framework, Marvel has once again done what they’ve proven themselves best at; making fun, highly entertaining comic book movies that are effortlessly easy to enjoy. Nolan might be pushing the expectations for the genre, but The Avengers reminds us that just because something’s a spectacle, doesn’t mean it can’t be satisfying. Even better, you can bet there will be plenty of new Avengers fan ready to assemble when the team’s next outing arrives in the (hopefully not too distant) future.

4 out of 5