Once Upon a Time in Tokyo: Lost in Translation (Dir Sofia Coppola, 1h42m, 2003)

 So far we have seen Tokyo through Japanese eyes, as a national capital, as a social setting for detectives to delve into its criminal underbelly, and as a scenic backdrop where Tokyo is emblematic of the modernisation of the country and offering a fast-moving contrast to the older, more traditional parts of Japan. As with any nation, the capital on film reflects the national character, and indeed the character of its cinema in miniature. Tokyo when seen through western eyes is a very different place. It is easy to succumb to stereotype, to either the hyper-modern stand-in for the futuristic, the neon, the anime character at each corner, the giant robots, and Tokyo's ever-present cinematic self-destruction and renewal, or as ultra-cool background to ultraviolence, usually involving samurai swords and the ever-present yakuza, seen in both Kill Bill Vol 1 (2003), Bullet Train (2022), John Wick Chapter 4 (2023), and in the more noirish sense, Ridley Scott's Black Rain and The Yakuza (1975). Else, Tokyo is a place for Westerners to "find themselves", a sense of Tokyo as quirky zen theme-park, best seen in The Ramen Girl and Tokyo Fiancé.

Sometimes, Hollywood gets it right:the gleefully 80s Tokyo Pop (1988) not only manages to make its couple (Carrie Hamilton and real-life Japanese musician, Yutaka Tadokoro) work fantastically, essentially running the typical 1980s teen movie through a distinctly Japanese lens, but much of their chemistry is built upon those experiences shared by both nation's teenagers as much as it is about their differences. If not for its slightly kitschy and dated sentiments-the film's slightly music-nerdy tone is summed up by having Japanese hellraisers X (later X Japan) cameo in several scenes-I would certainly have reviewed it. No season about Tokyo, though, would be complete without the most notable western outing to the city, in the form of Sofia Coppola's odd-couple (Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson) comedy, Lost in Translation.

Lost in Translation is a film about loneliness; Lost in Translation's opening sequence is a perfect meditation on it. We are introduced to Bill Murray's Bob Harris, a faded action star now reduced to the igmony of-like many real life actors, including Tommy Lee Jones and Bruce Willis-appearing in Japanese commercials, although the real-life basis for this was inspired by Kurosawa and Coppola's father, Francis Ford, making adverts for the same Japanese whiskey brand who have now whisked Harris into the country for a week of filming and photographs. This is a career-best performance for the veteran actor, imbuing Bob Harris with a world weariness that few other actors can match-small wonder Coppola was willing to bet much of the film on his agreement to play the role-but play it to perfection Murray does.
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Tokyo in Isolation: Bill Murray as Bob Harris

The camera and the car Bob is in drift along, the outside blurry, or devoid of people-the scale of the neon-lit city barely feels human. Not only is Bob detached visually, but through the hazy shoegaze that dominates the soundtrack-by My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain, as well as the score by Kevin Shields, guitarist of the former band, there is a sense of disassociation-a sense of the world being out of focus. Bob is alone. Bob's loneliness only grows as he works on the adverts; the language barrier only adding to this sense of isolation; his small army of Japanese handlers are polite but distant whilst there's something bleakly comic about the two vignettes in which we see Bob working with the Japanese crew, the back and forth via translator in the first as Harris becomes convinced their intermediary is missing out information, the repetition of one simple scene becoming purgatorial, and the frustration of the later photoshoot. Night only brings Bob insomnia, and further solitude, only made greater by the work of cinematographer Lance Acord, the heavy blues and greys in the film's filtering.

Visually, Bob is also often isolated in the frame: during the two advertising shoots, he is alone against a set whilst the Japanese crew huddle behind the camera-Coppola is not just making a statement about the loneliness of her protagonist, but the inherent sense of the process of film-making doing so. Into this solipsism enters Johansson’s Charlotte; like Harris, she is essentially caught in place in Tokyo, her recently married husband working as a photographer on press-shoots, and she is left to her own devices. Like Harris, her insomnia, this dislocation from being in Tokyo temporally, leads to some evocative imagery, as she watches the city below. Unlike the protagonists of lesser romantic comedies set in the country, there is little engagement in the "zen tourism" stereotype, and whilst she plays a foil to Murray's world-weary traveller, she holds her own against the actor, much as Charlotte does against Bob, the film giving her internal crisis at the opposite end of life to Bob weight and gravitas in a genre that often discounts youth.

Soon, the two of them meet, both drifting around the hotel late at night-much of this down to the fact the Hyatt, that forms the backdrop to much of the film, restricted filming to the small hours of the morning-before striking up a rapport that grows into friendship and more-from here, we join Bob and Charlotte, either exploring this quiet melancholy between the two of them between choice cuts of C86 pop and the ever-present, never-intrusive city, or stepping out into it, following them into parties, karaoke bars, and back into the streets of Tokyo. Whilst the film occasionally does lean into the sensibility of curious westerner peering in, voyeuristic, to Japanese pop culture-there's an extended sequence where Murray appears on Japanese TV alongside the outlandish figure of Takashi Fujii's Matthew Minami, a real-life TV presenter, these ventures into Japanese customs have our protagonists quickly withdraw back into their shared, and decidedly western comfort zones. Does it become more than friendship? 

At the centre of Lost in Translation is Bob and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson)'s friendship in a foreign city

Yet, we must return to the central fact of Lost in Translation-if this is a film about loneliness, about human connection, and about homesick Americans bonding over their experiences and struggles in their lives back in the USA, why Tokyo? Why here? With the language barrier existing as much as barrier between people as it is for wry comedy, any other country could have been our setting, but Coppola chose Tokyo; film scholar Homay King notes that Lost in Translation does not "sufficiently clarify that its real subject is not Tokyo itself, but Western perceptions of Tokyo"; yet it is only at the end of the film, as the distant VU via East Kilbride drums of "Just Like Honey" by The Jesus and Mary Chain kick in, as postscript to the film's eternal mystery, that we see Tokyo, that we see its landmarks, the Tokyo Tower suddenly looming into shot for one brief second, before we're whisked onward.

It's easy to consider Lost in Translation as Coppola writing what she knew at the time, a film-maker jet-lagged and lonely, travelling across the world on the press tour for 1999's The Virgin Suicides, or to consider that only in Tokyo could Bill Murray's Hollywood star, faded or not, drift through the city, unnoticed. It's even, surprisingly, easy to consider the film as a Western answer to Ozu, at least thematically-Ozu would never permit the camera such movement-understanding Tokyo as a city defined by connections, as a place, as Tokyo Story depicts, where people, regardless of background, struggle to connect to each other, and where the two generations must, eventually, come to an understanding with each other. Perhaps all films about the world's largest city meditate upon connections, to one extent or another.

Simply, Lost in Translation is one of  western cinema's definitive visions of Tokyo, within which Murray and Johansson try to find connection in the Japanese capital, and find, albeit fleetingly, each other.

Rating: Must See

Lost in Translation is available on DVD and BluRay from the BFI. It is available for streaming via the BFI Apple TV

Next week, a slight change of pace as we go Fast and Furious, and wonder if they know our last stop in Tokyo, with The Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift.