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Lost in Translation These must be satisfying days for actor Bill Murray. Murray started off as a Chicago comedian, getting his break with the Second City troupe. From there, he made the now-common leap to Saturday Night Live and then to feature films. Many of his early movies--Meatballs, Caddyshack, and Stripes--were comic blockbusters, and Murray's deadpan sarcasm and defiance of authority made him the hero of many teenage boys like myself. He felt constrained by that stereotype, however, and yearned to do something different, something serious. So in 1984, fresh off the triumph of Ghostbusters, he tried his hand at a drama called The Razor's Edge. I wasn't a huge movie fan back then, but I distinctly remember the media's reaction to Murray's attempted transition: savage ridicule. How could a comic try to play a straight man? Who does Bill Murray think he is? Why doesn't he just do what we want him to do? Beaten down by the pre-release anti-hype and a series of mean-spirited reviews, The Razor's Edge was an enormous bomb. Back to comedy hell for you, Mr. Murray. But Bill Murray didn't quite return to where he had been. Sure, he made movies like Scrooged and Ghostbusters II, but he also started searching out roles that were a little more intelligent or required a little more depth: Bob Wiley, the friendly neurotic in What About Bob?, or Phil Connors, the acerbic weatherman in the brilliant Groundhog Day. Even when he showed up in dumber fare (Kingpin, for instance), Murray brought a sharper edge to his performance, and his marvelous comic touch was used brilliantly in the entertainingly raunchy Wild Things. Then along came Wes Anderson,
the wunderkind director of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums.
Anderson saw what Murray had been doing and realized here was an actor
who could mine both the comic absurdity and the melancholy poignancy of
life. Cast as Herman Blume, a middle-aged man competing with a teenager
for a woman's affections, Murray was fantastic as someone who couldn't
quite let his mean-spiritedness get away from him. He beautifully balanced
the dramatic with the comedic, garnering numerous awards from various critics
groups. All of that was just preparation, though, for
Bob is a middle-aged actor, a man who's done too many bad movies and too few good ones but who still commands a large audience. He's in Tokyo where he's getting paid $2 million to endorse a brand of whiskey. There his familiar face and strange resemblance to the Rat Pack make him a natural pitch person. Of course, he's miserable. He's stuck in a luxury hotel, where he doesn't know anybody and can barely communicate with the people he meets. During the day, he does photo shoots and commercials. At night, he gets drunk ("at least the whiskey works," he remarks) and listens to bad lounge acts. Every once in a while he calls his self-absorbed wife who resents everything about him. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) isn't having any more fun than Bob is. Sure, she's young and beautiful. But her photographer-husband (Giovanni Ribisi) is off shooting models and rock stars, while she's stuck in the same hotel, where she doesn't know anyone, including herself. At least Bob knows who he is, but that's hardly comforting. Drawn by their shared sense of loneliness and lostness, Bob and Charlotte start hanging out together. At first, it's just the relief of being able to speak the same language. But their relationship slowly starts to build. Director Sofia Coppola moves the story along at a languid pace, introducing new developments only when necessary. Long conversations between Bob and Charlotte hint at subdued emotions, but what they see in each other simmers long before it boils. My friend Garth asked with a mixture of fear and disgust whether they end up sleeping together, and I told him I wouldn't say. Part of the movie's effectiveness is that we wonder not only if it'll happen but how bad the consequences would be if it did. If Lost in Translation sounds like standard middle-aged male fantasy, I apologize for my description, as the movie is much, much more than that. The difference in ages is crucial. Bob sees an opportunity to share what little wisdom he has as well as try to vicariously re-capture his youth. Charlotte finds someone who's a little more stable, a man, unlike her husband, who might be able to help her navigate her way back to shore. It's the sort of friendship we don't see often in movies, and it's both refreshing and challenging. Coppola, who made such a splash with The Virgin Suicides, knows how to capture an image. Some of Translation's visuals are simply stunning. A nighttime car ride through the neon of Tokyo is incredibly gorgeous, and her way of capturing Murray's weathered face is profound. There are scenes of Murray just sitting in a car that I could've watched for an hour. I wish Coppola's editing style had let those images linger a little more; the mad-cap pace of Tokyo life seems to have invaded her editing room. Johansson has made a name
for herself with movies like Ghost World and The Man Who Wasn't
There. She gives another strong performance here. She's not just a
pretty face, though she certainly has that quality, too. The supporting
performances aren't as good, though the fault lies more with Coppola's
script, which takes great delight in denigrating easy targets. A vapid,
blonde actress (played by Anna Faris) is routinely trotted out for our
ridicule, and the same extends to various Japanese personalities as
Fortunately, this is Bill
Murray's movie, and he rises above all of that. His way with a glance or
a simple gesture is pure poetry. He has some wonderfully comic moments
(his interactions with a commercial director are hilarious), but it's his
more frequently serious persona that's truly compelling. We believe this
is a man struggling with his place in the world, wondering if being young
again is worth the hassle but knowing full well that old age isn't what
he expected. Murray's performance reminds us of our own mortality and confronts
us with our own choices. Are we sliding through life, lost in the neon
glitter, or are we breaking down the barriers that separate us from true
communication, true communion? Murray
J. Robert Parks 9/4/2003
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