IT IS AS IF the media elite is daring moviegoers to dislike Sofia Coppola and the Best Picture-nominated film she wrote and directed, “Lost in Translation.” Teasing a feature article in which directors of last year’s Oscar-likely movies talk with each other, Newsweek–the coolest of the weeklies–had a picture of the young Coppola on its table of contents. The caption read: “Sofia Coppola talks with her peers.”
Her “peers” would be, oh, young, inexperienced directors like Clint Eastwood and Peter Jackson.
The New York Times Magazine gave the movie extensive, lavish play before “Lost in Translation” had even been seen anywhere outside of the rarified world of film festivals, treating Coppola as a generational north star along the lines of an Allen Ginsberg. Such attention would be impossible to get if you weren’t from a famous clan (hilariously, the Times Magazine article quoted Zoe Cassavetes on the merits of Sofia Coppola; they probably fact-checked her comments with one of the Scorsese children). It’s more than enough to make any good anti-royalist sneer.
And yet I like the Oscar-nominated movie, a lot you might say, but with the following caveats. It wasn’t the best movie I saw last year; furthermore, it wasn’t even the best small, independent movie I saw last year. (That honor belongs to the truly spectacular feat of acting and directing, “Raising Victor Vargas.”) Also, on its cloudwalk toward a magical soul-meeting, the movie steadies itself by the handrails of a Salingeresque condescension and a handful of cliches that do not speak well of the director’s otherwise light touch.
For those who haven’t yet seen the movie, “Lost in Translation” is the brief, nonconjugal love story of two bruised American souls, played by Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray, who find each other in the midst of the bewildering visuals and mores of Tokyo. Most of the action takes place in a huge hotel where the two are staying, or rather stuck, until they can finally escape and possibly return home to the shortcomings of their respective lives.
THE ANTI-COPPOLA CASE is easy to sum up. Sympathy for the main character Charlotte is established by showing how her sensitive nature and intelligent mind makes her a little too good for her husband’s work as a celebrity photographer. She’s also too good for the people her husband has to mingle with, fakers like a Hollywood actress who’s in Japan to promote her latest action flick. The movie and its uncharitable humor is instructive of the contempt one feels for fellow Americans who make asses of themselves abroad. Yet this is not solid ground: Many of the failings the movie criticizes are also its heroine’s failings.
The stupid American actress is overheard yammering on about how she’s, like, so into Bhuddism and, you know, reincarnation. Yet a phoney sacred air fills the screen as Charlotte embarks on her own moments of spiritual tourism. Not that there isn’t a difference between the shallowness of the dumb American tourist and the unavoidable shallowness of the intelligent, respectful American who knows she’s only looking on. But the latter doesn’t truly describe Charlotte. She is prone to Zooey-Glass-like fits of spiritual trembling without anything so redeeming as Zooey’s simultaneous self-contempt. Props like the American actress, her husband’s work, a lounge singer’s bad taste, though entertaining in themselves as objects of derision, also bring attention to Charlotte’s own lack of, well, depth and fine taste.
And the authenticity supplied by the movie’s cherished pair of lover/non-lovers is not all its cracked up to be. In a late-night bull session, soulmate Bill Murray says the day a parent’s first child is born is the most terrifying of his life because everything changes. A patent cliche, although his soulmate Scarlett Johansson comments that no one ever tells you that. (Speaking as a new parent, I can tell you that this is actually what everyone tells you.)
Interestingly, most of the problems are in the movie’s script, while the movie itself is about a human space beyond words where a communion of souls can be achieved, even with strangers (or perhaps only with strangers, because they are not party to one’s usual rut). And here the movie is genuinely special. Indeed, the text of this movie is so-so; its subtext, on the other hand, is one of a kind.
BUT IT IS ALSO HERE that Coppola must share a great deal of credit with her actors. Indeed, watching the movie and reading about how she pulled it off, one is apt to conclude that Sofia Coppola’s greatest directorial accomplishment was in convincing Bill Murray to be in her movie. For which she certainly deserves directorial credit. But this necessarily detracts from her status as a visionary, and forces you to wonder whether she just got really lucky. Born lucky, you might say.
Born lucky as in having a famous director for a father and an executive producer. Born lucky as in having a director for a brother who flew to Japan and substitute-directed for her on some scenes when time was running short. Born lucky as in having a name that means your work is instantly branded as “potentially interesting”–as opposed to the “probably sucks” burden of preconception most others have to overcome. Born lucky as in being perfectly positioned to thrive in the only art form that truly requires huge sums of social capital and financial connections to make your project happen. Well, then again, it could be just that she’s a very talented young woman. David Skinner is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard.
