Lost in Translation

I first saw Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola's masterpiece, last October 2003, the weekend it came out here in Atlanta. I just saw it again as it premiered on cable last Saturday.

Lost in Translation is a movie I separate it in the 3 beautiful and perfect performances. 2 on-screen, and Sofia's writing and direction behind the camera:

I'll start with Scarlett Johansson, who I fell completely in love with. Her pink panties scene at the very beginning of the movie is classic, her beauty is captivating. She's not this thin model-like woman. She's a normal beautiful person. Her acting is so perfect and flawless you don't even notice she's acting.
She's Charlotte, a young woman that's married to this photographer she says "doesn't know anymore". She's graduate from college, Yale, but she wasn't doing anything, so she ended up traveling to this Japan she's now bored by with her husband. Plus she doesn't know what to do with her life and all her free time.

Bill Murray, unlike Johansson, you notice he's acting, but he does play an actor, so these scenes in which he acts look funny but are also extremely well portrayed. His insomniac bored face is perfection.
His Bob Harris is an actor, who's now in Japan filming whisky commercials for huge sums of money just because he was a famous movie star in the past (70s and 80s). His life is not so great either. He forgot his son's birthday when he left for Japan and his wife calls every once in a while just to remind him his mistakes. She also doesn't even acts like his wife if it weren't for the complains. They say just "good bye" without any "I love you"s or any other sign of affection when they hang up the phone.
He's also bored in Japan. Drinking alone in the bar having to say hello to those fellow countrymen who recognize him when he only wants to be alone and have a drink.

Both of them can't sleep. They spend the night watching TV by themselves or drinking down in the hotel bar.
She's a young woman in her early 20s, He's in his late 40s, early 50s I guess, and they have one thing in common, they can't sleep.

Sofia Coppola wrote this beautiful story about finding a friend in an unexpected place. The movie is also perfectly shot with an amazing cinematography.
The characters go out and enjoy Japan's life together. Always in a very playful theme.
I particularly loved the karaoke scene, after which they both go to the hotel, and in a scene that at first horrifies you for the possibility of something happening (she's sleepy, he's taking her to her bed, and we don't want anything to happen between them, and nothing does), he leaves her in her bed, he goes back to his room, and they sleep the entire night for the first time.
The story is beautifully written, and that Oscar Sofia won is well deserved.

I remember I had been waiting for the movie since a few years ago when I first read that Sofia was writing and directing her second movie, and that the movie would star Bill Murray.
Sofia Coppola's first movie, 1999's The Virgin Suicides (starring a young Kirsten Dunst) is one of my favorites movies of all time. It's perfect.

I ranked the Lost in Translation 9th Best of 2003, for many it was Number 1, but for me last year was all about Return of the King and Kill Bill. And I was very in love with The Last Samurai and also Matchstick Men, to name a few movies that people didn't include in their top 10, but I absolutely loved.

Lost in Translation also lost some points for me last year for a problem I have with slow paced movies watching them for the first time in a theatre after a long day of work (like Collateral), some scenes kind of bore me, but when I think about them afterwards, and specially when I watch them a second time in a theatre or on DVD, my love for them grows.
Lost in Translation is a perfect movie, and I love it more than before now. My love for Sofia Coppola's writing and direction is as big as possible, as it is my love for Scarlett Johansson (though I haven't seen Girl with a Pearl Earring and for some reason I'm not dying to see), and Bill Murray, too. He's doing Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic which comes out next Christmas, a movie I cannot wait to see, as I cannot wait to see whatever Sofia Coppola is doing next.
Peter Jackson took a very well deserved Oscar for Direction this year, but Sofia will get hers in the near future, and I'm going to love it.