Lost in Translation

Bill Murray always had an edge, but as he settles into middle age and enjoys the attentions of a new wave of hugely talented young filmmakers, it’s what’s underneath the smirk that counts. And what’s underneath is utter despair. Here Murray plays Bob, an aging movie star who flies to Tokyo to bag an easy paycheck. Although he doesn’t have the near-suicidal glaze of Rushmore’s Herman Blume, the guy needs a shaking up, and bad. So does Charlotte (Ghost World’s Johansson), a wandering twentysomething stuck at the same Tokyo hotel. She and Bob connect, not sexually, but in a far more profound – and risky – way. Their relationship becomes extraordinary – a yearning, indelible love-affair-that-isn’t. Lost in Translation is about the kind of catharsis that exists outside of movies: the slow reawakening, triggered by the compassion and like-mindedness of another, that everyone craves. Coppola’s film, a lovely, quietly thrilling thing, begins with a man, thick with ragged, wincing despair, looking around and questioning, "Is this all there is?" And by film’s end, the defiant negation: No, there’s so much more.