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E Randy,
This thread is obviously already dead. No one can actually refute any of my accurate and true complaints with this B+ film. I have no choice but to post a 2nd essay in an attempt to discover whether anyone out there can actually defend the film on terms other than 'gee i loved it' 'the music was so great' and 'bill murray was so funny.' And no, in case anyone is wondering, Sofia Coppola did not pee on my foot.
Dear Ms. Fleming,
I am writing in regard to your recent Newshour essay contrasting Kill Bill and Lost In Translation. First, I fully sympathize with your sentiment that Tarantino is not the bold filmmaker he was once thought to be, although he might be. And I agree with you a bold filmmaker could be someone who reaches deep into the common human experience, and pulls out something meaningful, which needn't have to do with swords, decapitations or even goblins. But alas, Sofia Coppola is not the answer you seek. Lost In Translation has all the trappings of a great movie. It has great sights and sounds and solid acting by at least one actor. But it's not a great movie. And if its immediate success and acceptance is any clue, nor is it bold.
You suggest that by not relying on mega-violence and sex, Coppola is somehow bold? What was bold about having the two protagonists not have sex given that half of America would have thrown up on themselves if they had and that some of that vomit might have reached the tender ankle of Mrs. Coppola? Wong Kar-Wai's In The Mood For Love focused on the longing of two people who are ultimately unable to connect, and by connect I mean have sex. Now that was bold since we wanted them to get together as much if not more than the characters themselves did. And what was bold about having such a huge age difference between Bob and Charlotte? Harold and Maude had an even bigger one, and they sure enough did have sex. And I almost vomited, but I didn't. Now that was bold filmmaking.
You say that Kill Bill is shallow, but when it comes to superficiality, it is Coppola who is the hostess with the mostest. No need to crowd. There's plenty for everyone. First, we have the shameless exoticization of the Japanese, which should bother you. Coppologists will say it's okay because it's only the perspective of Bob and Charlotte. But where is the evidence that Coppola's own is any different? Consider the 'lip my shoe' scene with the Japanese prostitute in the hotel. First, no hooker should have to suffer such humilation. As if it weren’t enough to be rejected by the client, now her accent is ridiculed on top of it. And while it may not be a crime to employ this sort of joke, it does create an imbalance in the force, which the director must then do something to correct. Take the scene in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket when the motorcycle pimp brings the Vietnamese prostitute to the young GI's. They all make fun of his accent. "Do you wan number wan fuckie?" "Yes, we wan, we wan." But when the prostitute refuses to do it with a black man, note how the pimp shows respect by faithfully translating her objection. "Too beaucoup. Too beaucoup." Then when the penis in question is taken out, the pimp preserves his own dignity by looking away. And like the pimp, Kubrick shows deference and sympathy to the characters he has brought forth for our consumption. True we still laugh, but not unreproved. This is the right way to do the foreign accent thing. Coppola's is wrong.
But Saturday Night Live does it, don't they, with Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd as two "wild and crazy" Czech brothers swinging for American foxes? Sure, they make fun of the accents, the attitudes, the powervac all the way from Bratislova. But in the end, low and behold, they sure enough do get the foxes. Again, the issue isn't whether you make fun of someone or not. It's why. In Best In Show we get to laugh ourselves silly over crazy-obsessed dog people, but we're also made to love them—and through the same sequences. And when Coppola does try to prop up Japanese culture, it seems forced because it's unconnected to the main storyline. Misty walks through Japanese temples are as pertinent as a series of self-help tapes or a swim in the hotel pool. We watch young Japanese kids being cool in an arcade. Yes, they are cool. And it has nothing to do with Bob or Charlotte other than they're totally missing it. It seems with Lost Coppola expects us to laugh at Japanese culture, but love Bob and Charlotte—and then spend a little time just staring at the screen.
Next, we're given a one-dimensional, wholly unsympathetic caricature of a wife back home. It's reverse exoticization I tell you! Bob's cookie-cutter wife does nothing to further the complexity of whatever internal struggle we might want to project onto him, since Coppola didn't. And are we to believe that anyone, no matter how deranged by drugs and rock and roll music, could ignore Scarlett Johansson? Half-clad? In a hotel room? In Japan? Actually, yes. If she was that boring, I think anything's possible. Personally, I would be very attracted to any tall, somewhat emaciated, Swedish-named heroin junkie with a six inch hypodermic sticking out of her chest. Now where could I find that? The friend on the phone in the beginning was almost as unrealistic. Scarlett Johansson pours her heart out to you on an overseas phone call. You just don't respond with "yeah, that's great, gotta go." Nobody does, except I suppose the people in Sofia Coppola's imagination.
Sometimes when trying to sort out good and great films, we must look to the little clues for help. When Bob gets out of the cab and whispers in Charlotte’s ear, it’s marketed as a transcendental moment shared between the two of them. But this is shattered when the entire point of the scene becomes not what either one of them is feeling, but rather the mere fact of us not being allowed to hear it. We want to know what he said because we’re desperate for some meaning to the whole affair when, of course, there is little. In In The Mood For Love, when Tony Leung whispers his secret into the wall at Angkor Wat, no one is thinking about what he’s actually saying because they already know the meaning and because they’re all too busy trying not to explode in huge tears. The scene is also a copout because it essentially provides audiences with the same gratification as another scene which did not take place, which is where the two of them just go into a room and shut the door on us (remember we don't expect or want them to show it). People have speculated on the many things he might have whispered in her ear. Let me propose that if he told her he loved her or wanted to see her again, that this would hardly be any more acceptable to his wife back home. And what else besides that could he possibly have said? Nice wig?
A light touch, in a great director, is when the sense of something deeper weighs like a sunken ship at the bottom of the film. But it is left there waiting and not blasted to the surface for vulgar looting. There is only seabed at the bottom of Lost In Translation. Nothing is asked of us or expected. We don’t have to fight back vomit (except perhaps during the karaoke scene) or tears or see something in any new light. The closest the film comes to being a real movie is when Bob stubs his toe and inadvertantly sleeps with the redhead next door, and both Charlotte and us have to deal with it.
Sofia Coppola does not have the light touch of a great director. She simply does not touch. She has made what amounts to an hour long Zima ad with a storyline by Nyquil fit for consumption by four million Americans ready to lap up an exocitized world and pretend like they've learned something. Tarantino may be, as you basically suggest, raised by wolves. But he is the master of the unique domain he himself has created. Not that I’m necessarily going in, but there he is. Lost In Translation is a good film for seeing one time. Then just as Bob will forget Charlotte, so too we will forget this film. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Yours Truthfully,
Cold Bacon |
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