Lost in Translation, directed by Sofia Coppola (2003)
There is a special brand of loneliness and dislocation that accompanies the business traveler – that class of traveler who takes passage under another’s banner. It is a brand of loneliness that cannot be called ‘homesickness’ because for the business traveler, it is not about missing ‘home’. It is about missing the person they are when they are at home. The business traveler’s identity – multifaceted at home – is necessarily limited to the identity required to conduct the business at hand when they are on the road. This is why the atmosphere of loneliness and dislocation that pervades Lost in Translation will be familiar to anyone who has traveled not by choice but by obligation – obligation to employer, to spouse, and so on. Separated from the emblems and psychic distractions of home, Bob and Charlotte, the central characters in Lost, are left alone to wrestle with their identities and address unwelcome questions about what they have become, and what they are becoming.
In the midst of this circumstantial struggle Bob and Charlotte – unexpectedly, yet elegantly – create a connection that is sexually unconsummated, but leaves them feeling deeply satisfied and euphoric nonetheless.
THE LOST TRAVELERS
Bob Harris, a past-his-prime action film star, is in Japan to shill whiskey – continuing the tradition of American movie stars who pitch packaged products to the Japanese while packaging themselves as artists in America. Bob doesn’t make movies anymore, and winces at seeing his work from the seventies. He brushes off his fans and tells Charlotte that he could “be doing a play somewhere”. His wife Lydia can barely conceal her contempt for him during their loaded long-distance phone calls. His kids miss him, but Lydia pointedly reminds him, they are growing used to his absence. Bob doesn’t like what he has become, but has surrendered to it. Charlotte, on the other hand, is becoming. The film’s opening image, a tight lingering shot of Charlotte’s youthful ass, blossoming in it’s sheer pink panties, evokes the cherry blossom that is central and sacred in Japanese culture and imagery. The connection between Charlotte and flower is made several times throughout the film: When she experiments with domesticity by decorating her sterile hotel room with pink paper blossoms; when she participates in a Japanese flower arranging seminar in her hotel; when she explores the gardens of Kyoto.
But what is Charlotte becoming? She fears that she is becoming a snob whose intellect and Yale education serve only to distance her from her husband (as he points out) and her peers (such as the hip-hop hipster in the hotel bar who she cannot understand). Is she becoming spiritually disconnected, as she tells a friend in a futile long-distance phone call after a visit to a shrine? Is she becoming a writer, even though she hates what she writes, or a photographer, even though she sees her photos as mediocre? A cliché who listens to self-help treacle? An adulteress? Charlotte is afraid of what she will become, but cannot find a clear path to follow. Bob and Charlotte are stuck, lost, and lonely. But decades apart, they represent mirror images of the same problem, with the same result. Bob’s choices are limited, so he is stuck. Charlotte’s choices are limitless, so she is stuck. They are perfect for each other.
CREATION AND TRANSLATION
Mirror images of creation and artistic pursuit are employed throughout Lost. In these mirror images we see the potential and the perversion of an instinct that comes from the same source. We hear the evocative music of the Lost soundtrack and we also hear Sausalito, the ludicrous lounge act in the New York bar of the hotel. We see the meditative craft of Japanese flower arranging and we see Lydia trying to choose between a dozen shades of burgundy carpet. We see photographer used to capture false moments in Bob’s advertising shoot, but also to capture honest moments at Charlie Brown’s house and the karaoke room. We see Japanese teenagers as arcade rock star poseurs. We see an airhead actress expound on reincarnation, but we also see a barren tree brought to life with thousands of paper-bound wishes.
This mirroring exists in the characters of Bob and Charlotte as well. Creation and the pursuit of art will be Charlotte’s savior, even if she cannot see it yet. Lounging in her hotel room in her cherry blossom panties, she gazes at the city of Tokyo spread out at her feet. She is an observer, she is contemplative, but she longs to cross over into the realm of the creator. She pokes around the edges of creativity. She knits. She decorates. She arranges flowers. She writes, she takes photos.
Bob is a different story. An actor who no longer acts, Bob’s potential is exhausted, his choices narrowed. He has become a person he despises. Cynical and detached, he suffers but has mostly given up. He finds comfort in alcohol. When Bob sits by his hotel window, he does not look out, but grimly inward.
And yet they connect. Connect over humor. Loneliness. Alcohol. Movies. Music. Over lack of sleep, as they move in parallel from jet-lag insomnia, to existential insomnia, to sexual insomnia. Insomnia itself is the burden of the seeker – the inability to turn off and become unaware (whether through sleep, television, other sedatives). In this common burden, they recognize themselves in each other. And in this recognition, they find a connection – a connection that is not expressed in words until the last possible moment.
At the end of Lost, after an awkward goodbye, Bob chases after Charlotte, embraces her, kisses her, and whispers unheard words into her ear. Breaking apart and continuing on their separate ways, we see Bob smile for the first time. Charlotte walks with a new confidence. We sense something profound has been expressed.
We sense that Bob is leaving Japan reminded that life still contains profundity, possibility, and purpose. We sense that Charlotte has learned that she is special, and unique, but that her problems are not. We sense that the lost travelers of Lost in Translation are leaving a little less lost than when they arrived.
