Review. Lost in Translation

LOST IN TRANSLATION

I felt like seeing this film since I am a student in Translation & Interpreting and its title caught my attention. What surprised me was when the film finished and I my air was as just as the beginning of the film. Nothing inspiring, nothing touching.

The film is all-too-often slow or just plain boring. I can resume the whole story in just one line: Two American souls, in a very different country, Japan, where they met themselves and because of the contact they feel an irresistible and impossible-accomplishing desire.

I am not a professional reviewer but, please allow me to criticize in a somewhat negative way this film. The director, Sofia Coppola, seems to have no idea about Japanese culture, and as far as we know about shooting films (and also for writing books) is a must the author should have a deep knowledge about what he or she is going to talk about in its work. This aspect seems not to be important for Sofia Coppola; and what is even worse, she makes fun of something that she knows nothing about.

The film puts forward
an extremely patronizing,
stereotypical and borderline
 racist view of Japanese culture.

A recurring joke in the film is the mockery of Japanese speech pattern of the replacement of the letter r with the letter l. Imagine a situation where you as an American meet some Japanese people in the US. Say, you know a little bit of Japanese language. In order to convey your respect to them, you take the risk of ‘appearing ridiculous by speaking to them in Japanese. Imagine how you would feel if the Japanese people made fun of your poor pronunciation. That is a thing which rarely few Americans do: to try to learn other language since they feel superior (I don’t want to seem racist in that way, but it’s what the film suggests to say, I think the two lead characters epitomize the ‘ugly Americans’).

Another scenes of this type is the one where Murray's character struggles to understand a heavily accented Japanese director during a photo shoot, and his mimicry of the poor man's voice to decipher each instruction isn't funny, just embarrassing, akin to the lack of logic behind an English-speaking tourist abroad raising his voice to make themselves understood to non-English speakers. 

To stick of for the film, I have to say that it has some funny moments, but very few ones… For example the one where Murray is taking photos for the advertisement.

Anyway, the film actually had a profound effect on me. I love travelling, discovering new different cultures, the more striking they are, the better. That’s why I met myself in the characters’ shoes and I understood how they felt when they were for first time in a completely new city, without knowing anybody… but also the positive thing, when you begin to meet new friends, with different thoughts… Traveling to a different country is an effective way to bring out different aspects of yourself.

To sum up, this movie is neither about a specific culture nor about cultural differences. It is about feelings of alienation, loss, loneliness, isolation, and passion. It is about lost souls rediscovering what it is like to feel something for real.

It could have taken place in France or Brazil, but it would not have been as effective. If you were to create the greatest contrast possible, Japan is certainly one of the best places to pick. But, in my opinion the director should have learnt more about Japanese culture before writing the script.