May 15, 2021

I am in Seattle! Yesterday, my friends and I walked around and drank some beers. We went to a restaurant (sat outside) where you order through a website, and my friend accidentally got 4 spam musubis (plus on purpose ordering plenty of other food). So we've been eating spam musubis. Talking has been our main entertainment, and we may run out of things to talk about. I could go on and on about screenwriting or basketball, but I don't think they'd want that. 

Mlog time! 

**SPOILERS**

LOST IN TRANSLATION

2003

Directed by: Sophia Coppola

Written by: Sophia Coppola 

Watched: 5/13/21

I watched this on a plane! The Wikipedia summaries of these films are generally pretty good. Anyway. Lost In Translation is a story about two Americans – Bob and Charlotte – feeling displaced and lonely in Tokyo. They’re both married to different people and feel disconnected or abandoned by those marriages. Bob is a middle-aged movie star and Charlotte is a recent college grad. The two are staying alone in a Tokyo hotel, and they start hanging out together. They become intimate without becoming physical, and as Bob has to leave to go back to America, he and Charlotte exchange a cordial goodbye. On his drive to the airport, he catches sight of Charlotte. He runs to her, hugs her, says something in her ear that the audience can’t hear, then the two kiss. They leave each other, smiling. 

This was a very stylish movie. I liked the romance, the lack of romance, the stillness and the slowness. The beautiful isolation. It took pot shots at the Japanese, making them seem extremely other, which felt racist. At the same time, it was supposed to feel other, thematically. I’m not sure if it accomplished in primarily making the American characters seem out of place without portraying the place itself as ridiculous. There were also long segments that seemed like a travel guide to Tokyo. Charlotte just wandering around. 

It was beautiful, though, and melancholic. I really liked the choice of not letting the audience hear what Bob tells Charlotte in the end. Knowing what he said wouldn’t have added – it would have probably sounded trite – but it was for Charlotte and him, between them. It was cool to see a movie, in the end, give its characters their privacy. There were excellent, stylish stills from this movie as well. Kind of like Bonnie and Clyde in that way. Cool characters! 

Rating: ★★★1/2