In an early scene from Sofia Coppola’s off-beat romantic comedy Lost in Translation, Charlotte ( Scarlett Johansson ) posts herself at her high-rise hotel window, peering over Tokyo’s featureless urban landscape like an angel keeping watch, forever invisible and at once detached from her distant subjects. Later on in the show, she visits a shrine in the old imperial capital of Kyoto and witnesses a traditional Japanese wedding. Sheltering beneath a huge red parasol and garbed in picturesque costume, the two newlyweds link hands. Charlotte looks on quietly. In both instances, no words or maudlin narration were needed to convey the poignant sense of quiet, luscious melancoly so intended, yet the intensity of the final mood expressed was multiplied manifold without. It is exactly with such a cinematic framework of toned down, unobtrusive visual style and quiet narrative treatment that the movie Lost in Translation is built on, something so rarely seen in Hollywood productions and which wholeheartedly won me over.
In light of my approaching journey ( I am set for a 3 year film study course in Tokyo come March, courtesy of the National Arts Council ), watching this film is like a harbinger of solitude, heralding my days of impending loneliness and loss.
Surely this is a film I will not easily forget in my days to come.
*For a more poetic and expressive review of the film, check out the comments box.
