“Lost in Translation” is the Same Old Story

by Melissa Biagtan
posted 10/20/03

Sophia Coppola’s new film “Lost in Translation” is this year’s critical darling. With dreamy shots, understated performances, and a hip soundtrack, critics are touting the film as an innovative and refreshing antidote to mainstream Hollywood.

And yet, critics have largely ignored the film’s negative portrayal of Japanese culture. To show the culture clash between American and Japanese culture, the film relies on stale stereotypes of the Japanese for laughs: They’re short! They’re wacky! They can’t pronounce their r’s! (There is one scene involving a Japanese prostitute that bashes viewers over the head with that joke.) The film is replete with racial gags that draw from the same old Hollywood stereotypes, from Mickey Rooney’s Mr. Yunioshi in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” to the Japanese car makers in 1986’s “Gung Ho, or even Sixteen Candle’s infamous Long Duk Dong.

The attitudes of the film’s central characters, the Americans, Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), towards Japanese culture are just as problematic.

Bob Harris is a falling American movie star who is in Japan to make some quick cash by doing whiskey commercials. Charlotte is a young newlywed who has followed her photographer husband to Japan while he’s on assignment. Beset with the same jet lag and ennui, Bob and Charlotte finally find each other, and the film explores the friendship/romance between them.

Murray’s characters as of late have been played with a kind of comic weariness that is both sarcastic and yet human and likable (e.g. Mr. Blume in Rushmore). This time, as Bob Harris, Murray is just as sarcastic but comes off instead as contemptuous and condescending. Harris wears a perpetual sneer on his face as he confronts language barriers and unfamiliar situations.

Lost 2 - Worst Kind of American Abroad