Lost In Translastion vs Before Sunrise

He runs after her, and they hug, and he whispers something in her ear. We don’t get to hear it, but she cries.

Bill Murray is better than you. You may not have known that, and I apologize for being so blunt. On the other hand, if you didn’t already know that Bill Murray was better than you, then maybe you shouldn’t even be here. Yeah, that’s right, go. Go on and get out of here, Mr. I Didn’t Know Bill Murray Was Better Than Me Even Though He Is.

For those of you remaining, those of you who know of your inferiority to Mr. Murray, welcome.

I would love to not like Sofia Coppola. I would love to say her name gets her work and that she’s little more than the Tori Spelling of film directors. For me to hate her, however, she would have to be untalented, and that, my friends, she is not. Much to my dismay, Sofia Coppola rocks. Her first film, The Virgin Suicides, was quiet, creepy and sad. Now she’s back with Lost in Translation—which she also wrote—a movie that made me happier and sadder than any movie since The Royal Tenenbaums. (And yes I’m well aware that The Royal Tenenbaums didn’t make some of you happy or sad, let alone both. I thought you left already.)

Lost in Translation tells the story of Bob Harris, a famous American actor filming a whiskey commercial in Tokyo. Bob makes mainstream action movies, but I’m not sure he’s proud of his career. (At one point a couple fans ask if he did his own driving in a recent movie and he barely acknowledges them.) He knows he could be off somewhere doing a play, but the whiskey ad is worth millions, and maybe Bob needs a vacation after all. He gets faxes and phone calls from home that sound important at first, but are always instead about shelves or carpet samples. When his wife asks if she should worry, Bob says “only if you want to.”

Bob, as you already know, is played by Bill Murray. There’s a scene in Quick Change when Murray is robbing a bank, dressed as a clown. When asked what kind of clown he is to be robbing banks, he replies “The crying-on-the-inside kind, I guess.” I thought of that a few times during Lost in Translation. Bob is funny, smart and friendly in the way that I hope Bill Murray would be, but he’s also sad and lonely. He’s in a foreign country all alone, and having to contend with his agent (who is pressuring him to appear on a talk show with the “Japanese Johnny Carson”), his commercial director (who has the energy of Quentin Tarantino, and like QT, says fifty words when one will do), and his aforementioned wife and kids back home. Luckily, he’s met a kindred spirit in Charlotte, played by Scarlett Johanssen.

Charlotte is recently married and staying in Bob’s hotel with her husband, John (Giovanni Ribisi) a celebrity photographer on assignment. John wears his sunglasses inside. Not just into the hotel, but in the room as well. This might be all you need to know about John. He leaves Charlotte cooped up in the room all day, because she’d just be bored if she came with him, or whatever.  In the room, Charlotte is bored and lonely. The scenes of her alone in the room are the most accurate portrayal of hotel living I’ve ever seen in a movie. I used to have a job where I was in a new hotel every week. Many days were spent just as Charlotte spends them, getting ready and going nowhere, or doing everything in bed. Eating, watching TV, you name it. I’ve stayed in a hotel for a full week without ever taking my suitcase off of the bed. Charlotte lives pretty much the same way.

Meanwhile, John’s hanging with indie bands and a shallow actress in town for a press junket (When told she looks anorexic, she says “thank you.”)  Charlotte is smart and sensitive (she visits a shrine and is upset that she wasn’t more moved) and finds John’s life silly at best. You’ll probably wonder why she married him in the first place, but then she says basically the same thing during a phone conversation.

One night she meets Bob in the hotel bar, and they begin to talk. They have an instant rapport, and I thought I knew where Lost in Translation was going with their relationship (I mapped out the whole formula, complete with a big John-confronts-Bob-after-a-misunderstanding fight), but it surprised me again and again. Bob and Charlotte begin a sweet friendship, at first rooted in their similar sense of humor. Charlotte accuses Bob of having a mid-life crisis, while he mocks the potential career of someone who majored in philosophy (Charlotte claims to already be professional. ‘Pro bono,” she says.)  Later, they meet again, and again, and soon, their meetings aren’t accidental or even “accidental”, but planned, and they’re seeing the sites of their overwhelming city together.

Out on the town, Charlotte and Bob attend parties, arcades, restaurants, and of course, bars. There’s a scene of them with friends of friends, singing karaoke, and it all comes together so simply and accurately, without any of the camp or ham we usually get in scenes like this. I loved the songs Bob and Charlotte sang (especially Bob doing Elvis Costello), and the sly looks they shared—some mixture of “we’re becoming friends” and “this is our secret, okay?” Bob and Charlotte are doing the touristy things they would otherwise feel embarrassed about.

Lost in Translation will probably get some attention for the age difference between its leads. But in this case, the age is necessary; not to create some May/December thing (actually it’s more March/October anyway), but to observe the chemistry and interplay between two people of different life experiences. As Bob and Charlotte become closer, we think their affair will kick in, but what we get instead is friendship, kind of, though it has the rush of a new romance. Two strangers, in a foreign country all alone, meeting in bars and sneaking out into the neon city for…friendship. Not that there isn’t romance too. Bob and Charlotte seem to have a better connection with each other than either does with their spouse. Bob, though, keeps this in check, which is almost impossible to imagine in a movie. He’s protective of Charlotte.  Unlike, say Harold and Maude, or Michael Douglas and every girl ever, Bob knows that he and Charlotte aren’t equals. Not really. He’s had more life, more sadness. He respects her intelligence and humor, and probably covets her freedom more than a little, but mostly he wants to keep her safe. There’s an absolutely beautiful scene of Charlotte and Bob lying side by side in bed. They’re both fully dressed, Bob flat on his back, Charlotte curled up, hooking her toes into his pocket. She asks about marriage and kids, and he speaks with such honesty and sincerity it takes her (and us) by surprise. Kids, you see, will ruin your life, but then you’ll end up liking them, so it’s not so bad. He tells her “I’m not worried about you.” Charlotte becomes everything Bob needs in that moment. She’s a woman providing companionship, a friend lending an ear, and a kid seeking advice. He reaches down…and pats her on the foot. The single most intimate act—not to mention the most efficient moment of storytelling-- I’ve seen in a movie this year. And the thing is, Lost in Translation is full of moments like that, like when Bob is waiting at a hospital, and having a no-translator-but-translator-needed conversation with a local. And when, before Bob and Charlotte go out that first time, she cuts the tag out of his shirt (Notice what Bob wears when he’s trying to look cool, compared with what Robin Williams and Steve Martin have worn in movies in similar situations, and you’ll get an example of how subtle and smart Lost in Translation is.). And, especially near the end, when Bob whispers something in Charlotte’s ear, and it stays their secret.

Murray and Johanssen are great in Lost in Translation. They’re both incredibly relaxed and subtle, and never turn the volume up when it’s not necessary. The scenes of Bob filming his commercial are just right. I cringe at the thought of other actors (cough—Jim Carrey—cough-cough) being asked to perform the “Rat Pack” bits Bob’s director wants from him. Bill Murray is perfect for this, because unlike pretty much anyone else today, or even the actual Rat Pack, being a gentleman, even a fake one, isn’t something he has to concentrate on. Charlotte has a lighter, but he lights her cigarette anyway. There’s a quick scene of Bob walking onto a green, taking a perfect golf swing and walking away, as if to say “see how easy I’m making this look?”

Plus, Lost in Translation is hilarious, and it’s moving, and it’s smart and pretty to look at. What else do you want?

The set-up of Lost in Translation (two strangers bond briefly in a foreign country) is remarkably similar to that of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise. The latter film though, has characters of similar age and life experience, so the chance of love over friendship seems a little greater. When I saw Before Sunrise years ago, I thought it was pretty cool. It really captured the feeling of those long, intoxicating (and at times intoxicated) conversations we find ourselves in from time to time. After Lost in Translation, I rented it again, and found that

1. It’s very sweet.
2. There is indeed lots of conversation, and the actors (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) have chemistry like crazy.
3. It kind of gets on my nerves.

Before Sunrise has the simplest plot ever, which is part of its charm. Jesse (Hawke) is an American traveling through Europe. He claims that he’s just traveling around for no reason, but after spending a few minutes with him, you might suspect—as I did--that he either went there for a big job interview and didn’t get it, or went there with a girlfriend and she dumped him. He meets Celine (Delpy) on a train, and invites her to the lounge car or bar car or club car or whatever.

Soon, they’re seated across a table from each other, breaking the ice. They have dinner, and a cute conversation, starting with Jesse’s lack of foreign language skills (turns out he’s not an ugly American, he just isn’t that smart.) and moving on to deeper subjects.

Later, dinner is over, and Jesse gets off in Vienna—he’s catching a plane back to the States tomorrow morning—but then he gets back on with an idea: What if Celine gets off the train with him and they spend the day in Vienna? He’s all motioning for her to get off, like he already knows she’s gonna (and we know she’s gonna too. I figured though, that she would say no, and then catch up with him later. But nope, she gets off with him right there.) It’s at this moment that Before Sunrise confounds our expectations somewhat. It doesn’t become a travelogue (although we do see lots of Vienna), and it’s not quirky strangers in a strange land (although there are a few nice touches, like the weird Austrian actors they meet, who are putting on a show about a cow who thinks it’s a dog.) Instead, Before Sunrise is two people, walking and talking and talking (also, they do some talking. Oh, and lots and lots of talking. They do that too.) They talk about love and sex and death. They talk about their families and their countries. There’s a scene early on, in the listening booth of a music store, where Jesse and Celine just stand there listening to a song, not knowing where to look. You can see it on their faces: they’ve gotten into more than they intended. There’s a similar moment on a Ferris wheel when Jessie starts to touch Celine’s hair and then doesn’t, and then she does, and then he almost does again, and you realize, oh yeah, they just met.

Their conversation, though, their endless conversation, while being the sort of thing I used to think was great, is a little much for me now. They have a very I-just-got-out-of-college conversation. One of those conversations where each person just waits for the other to finish speaking so they can take their turn. I’ve had conversations like that. It’s a little pretentious. I don’t mean it’s not genuine, but it’s just a little full of itself. Have you ever been on a road trip? It’s like the conversations you had on your road trip. (And don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You probably even brought the Book of Questions, didn’t you?) Let’s put it this way: They’ve been talking for five minutes or so when he pitches his idea for a 24 hour reality show. Ah, 1995, so innocent, so naïve. They’re like Harry and Sally meets My Dinner With Andre.

Before Sunrise is somewhat a rarity for romantic movies, especially in terms of the past couple decades. No wacky misunderstandings, no bodily fluids, no cheesy soundtrack. Is it the best? No, no it’s not. But in those moments, walking around Vienna, it makes a pretty strong case for itself. What it’s missing though, that Lost in Translation gets almost instantly, is that there’s a day after today, and it’s probably gonna suck. Before Sunrise, with all it’s live-for-the-moment-let’s-get-off-this-train hoo-ha, has a couple characters (well, one at least) who I’m afraid are just gonna turn this into some barroom mock-philosophical anecdote. Lost in Translation can keep a secret.

Lost in Translation: A
Before Sunrise: B