Why is lost in translation good

The Vern-Thank you. I hope you enjoy watching it again as I did last night! The reason I think people were so disappointed with Marie Antoinette is because they were expecting a conventional bio-pic but what Sofia did was make something that was absolutely different. With her film, you need to require certain amount of patience as Somewhere is definitely her most arty while The Bling Ring is a bit more conventional but also takes some terms into what is expected in relation to the true story.

Cristi B-I'm just glad there's people that love this film as much as I do as it's just something I really treasure and I hope to see it again on the big screen. Wow, this is an amazing post, genuinely one of the best things I've ever read on your site. I loved your reasons and agree with all of them.

I also knew that you loved Lost in Translation, but I had no idea it was your all time favorite. That's great man. Alex Withrow-Thank you. I had originally planned for something much bigger but there were several reasons why that got scrapped as I think I'll do that for its 20th Anniversary. Still, this is fun way to celebrate the film's 10th Anniversary.

Take your time! I am a big fan of Shields and MBV and read many interviews with him Coppola really took him out of hiatus. Shields said in some of the interviews a phrase I'll always remember: "Not making things is soul-destroying". It IS my best film of all time. Very hard to say that with so many excellent films in my lifetime, but with 65 years under my belt, I really don't care what anyone else says.

As a sidenote, this IS a romantic movie, as is "The Professional", which also ranks way up there. Coppola wants to get that note right. There isn't a viewer who doesn't expect Bob Harris and Charlotte Scarlett Johansson to end up in love, or having sex, or whatever. We've met Charlotte's husband John Giovanni Ribisi. We expect him to return unexpectedly from his photo shoot and surprise them together. These expectations have been sculpted, one chip of Hollywood's chisel after another, in tens of thousands of films.

The last thing we expect is… what would probably actually happen. They share loneliness. One of the strengths of Coppola's screenplay is that her people and everything they do are believable. Unlike the characters in most movies, they don't quickly sense they belong together, and they don't immediately want to be together.

Coppola keeps them apart for a noticeably long time. They don't know they're the Girl and the Boy. They don't have a Meet Cute. We grow to know them separately. We understand Charlotte loves her husband, and we understand how he wounds her, and why she cries on the phone. There's no possibility he will cheat on her with the Other Woman, the ditzy "star" Kelly, played by Anna Faris. John is simply a moth fluttering around her fame.

That's what hurts Charlotte; he leaves her alone in the hotel for silly reasons that betray him as callow. We understand that Bob loves his wife and especially his children at home in America, but after years and years he knows and says that marriage and children are "hard. We know that. Few movie characters know it in the sense he means. After they start talking, Johansson is instinctive in striking the right note of tentative friendliness. She knows Bob is a star, but doesn't care. Earlier their eyes met in the kind of telepathic sympathy strangers share when they know they're thinking the same thing about something happening in a room.

Now they can't sleep and it's in the middle of the night in a hotel bar. She isn't flirting, and she isn't not flirting. He isn't flirting. He's composed and detached. He doesn't give away one hint of emotion.

Without making it a big deal, he's almost studiously proper, as if making it clear he's not coming on to her. Of course he finds her attractive. He did when he saw her in the elevator and she didn't notice him. Or are we simply assuming he'd feel the same way we'd feel? Maybe he noticed her because they were the two tallest people in the elevator. I can't tell you how many people have told me that just don't get "Lost in Translation.

They complain "nothing happens. The characters empathize with each other that's what it's about , and we can empathize with them going through that process. It's not a question of reading our own emotions into Murray's blank slate. The slate isn't blank. It's on hold. He doesn't choose to wear his heart on his sleeve for Charlotte, and he doesn't choose to make a move.

But he is very lonely and not without sympathy for her. She would plausibly have sex with him, casually, to be "nice," and because she's mad at her husband and it might be fun. Coppola made the strategic decision to not reveal the dialogue, which has kept fans of the movie theorizing for over a decade. I was going to figure out later what to say and add it in and then we never did. It was between them. Just acknowledging that week meant something to both of them and it affects them going back to their lives.

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