Lost in translation-my instant thoughts.....

Lost in translation


Watched this movie today...and as usual the best movies are at the oddest hour, this movie started at 6:45 a.m....guess the honchos at the helm didnt think that too many people would want to watch this....maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong and in any case that is not the point of this blog....i have watched a timeless movie today and i have put down my thoughts and time of the day has nothing to do with it.....

i had wanted to watch this movie for a long long time....it never got released in the movie theatres in delhi (the honchos again you see...)....i was interested in the main theme of the movie, a theme that has been explored in many other movies but i do feel that it is a brave thing to do today....in these times, when making movies is fast becoming (has become?) an avenue for profit making.... creativity and introspection fast becoming a liabilty in the wall street type functioning in the movie industry....when movies are becoming all about big bucks and not about telling a story (unless you count films like matrix having a story...), unless there is high speed visual effects in it.....

this then is a story about human condition, about life and its dashed hopes and the realization that its not going to get much better than this...about knowing that we are always condemmed to be islands and yet about holding out hopes for bridges, not matter how frail and temporary....then this story is about survival, about knowing that some things are not meant to be and knowing that that is the best way.....this is also a story of encounters, about each person taking and giving what each one can and needs, selflessly and at the same time selfishly.....this paradox is all that the movie is all about....thats what makes it so beautiful.....

ok...so here is the main story....bill murray is a has-been actor, who it seems from the shots of his previous films, acted in potboilers.....in any case he is pretty famous and is a more or less recognizable face....he is middle aged now and facing a mid-life crisis....maybe thats a cliched phrase, is midlife crisis....what we may say is that he is facing the hard realities that life throws at you, maybe its a time when you introspect about your life's balance sheet and usually leave a lot of "if onlys" behind.....people he cared about have changed...not dramatically but subtly like his wife with whom he talks but does not communicate or is not able to (in one scene he says 'i love you' to her after the phone has been disconnected....) and he though he loves his children, he knows that their coming has changed his life irrevocably, perhaps for the worse....well he is in tokyo for an ad shoot for a whiskey brand which is paying him 2 million for it....he comes in contact with the culture of the japanese in tokyo that is at once outrageous (for their attempted mimicry of the american pop culture) and funny to look at.....bill murray manages to look amused and flummoxed at the same time......in sum total, he is a lonely man in a strange city with a sense of humour in his voice and actions and enough emotions in his expressions to carry the film on this strength alone.

scarlett johansson is a newly married woman whose husband is a photographer played by giovanni ribisi and she is a newly married unhappy woman with the way things are turning out, at the loneliness in her life, at its emptiness, since her husband who does seem to care about her only superficially (though utterly failing to understand her needs), is always out doing his work, a work that charlotte (her name) is not interested in....and he is shown as the archtypal male....all wrapped in his work and blind to his wife who is left to explore the city on her own....and yes she is also desperately lonely...and she is shown to be desperately in need for somebody to talk to (she tries to calls up one of her friend, who listens to her with half an ear....)

so the stage is set for two people to come into each other's lives...over a few meetings, there develops between them a bond which has at its base not lust, not gratification of the senses in the carnal sense.....guess their wounds are not so superficial as to be assuaged by that great hollywood remedy, "the jumping into bed and drain all yr sorrow" medicine.....they both needed someone to talk to without the other person being a high moral judge......no, nobody breaks down, there are no flood of tears....though the sorrow and the desperation is evident in their eyes and their smiles.....what adds to the emotions between them is the fact that they know that they can never be together again once bill murray (bob harris in the movie) leaves tokyo....they are two strangers who have suddenly found that they are more close to each other than they can ever be with the people whom they consider the closest......and yes they give and take of each other the support and the wild abandon that each one desires.....there is a bitter-sweet quality in each frame in the movie rendered perfect by the expressions of the two protogonists....in fact it is the expression of these two people that make the movie, not any dialouges...there are no long drawn dialouges, pontificated or otherwise....in fact they say the minimum of each others problems to each other....not much more than the bare statements of the facts.....and that is not necessary since they have a wonderful understanding between them......ah yes, the expressions come to their climactic best in the final scene....what he says to her in her ear is not heard and that is a great directorial move...gives us a feeling that something private has passed between them that they are entitled to have only for themselves and we who can identify with the characters appreciate that.....

there are no great climaxes...we all know how its going to end....."nothing happens" so as to say, except what does happen is more than what happens in half a dozen of the movies that hit the top.....yeah you need brains for this one but more than that, you need depth of feelings and imagination enough to put yourself in their shoes.....believe me, its not that difficult.....and if do, the meaning of the title becomes apparent to you, is suddenly revealed to you in all its beauty and poignancy.....a meaning that is best left to remain in the recesses of the mind where it gives a wonderful feeling than attempt to put it in words.....so i guess one has to see the movie to get that wonderful unarticulated feeling......

there are a hundred subtle moments in the movie that makes it perfect....its not possible to put them all here.....and if a third party is reading this, if you have come upto this, there is only thing you can do....so go do it.....