The 2003 film Lost in Translation is a portrait of disillusionment, disengagement, distraction, and separation. It portrays two introspective, intelligent, good-hearted people who have lost their moorings spiritually and emotionally in a boisterous, speedy world.
Bill Murray plays the role of Bob, an aging actor on the downward slope of his career, yet still recognizable to the media and the public. The film opens with Bob riding through Tokyo in a taxi from the airport to his hotel. He displays no expression as his cab passes the tall buildings, flashing meganeon signs promoting this and that product, and the crowds of people surging toward the delights that downtown has to offer. In his hotel room, he sits on the edge of the bed, disinterested, not knowing or caring what to do next. The next day we see Bob unenthusiastically filming commercials for a high-end Japanese whiskey.
At the same hotel is Charlotte, played by Scarlett Johansson, a recent Ivy League graduate in town with her husband, a photographer on assignment in Japan. He’s continually busy with his equipment, getting ready to rush off to work, paying her little attention. Bored and lonely, she sits idly looking at Tokyo from her hotel room window.
On a day trip to Kyoto, she comes across a Zen temple where she witnesses monks chanting the Heart Sutra. Their ceremony catches her attention. In the next scene, back in her room, she’s on the telephone with a friend in the United States, shaking, and on the verge of tears. She tells her friend about the Zen ceremony, saying, “I didn’t feel anything” followed by “I don’t know who I married.” Clearly Charlotte needs someone to talk to. Her friend, not hearing the cry for help, says, “Can you wait a moment?” We hear silence, then, “What were you saying?” Charlotte replies, “Nothing.” They say goodbye and the chance for connection is lost.
“I didn’t feel anything” comes as a surprise. Watching the Zen ceremony, her face showed that she did feel something. So what’s happened? Charlotte’s carefully constructed, habitual ways of seeing and feeling have been shaken. Witnessing the spirit of the ceremony, she saw something outside her usual confines. It threw her of balance.
Later, arm in arm with her husband in the hotel lobby, they run into Kelly, his superficial and immature starlet friend. She and Charlotte’s husband chat, ignoring her until he finally says, “Oh, this is my wife Charlotte.” When Kelly leaves, Charlotte is unhappy, having been left out. Her husband defiantly defends Kelly. “Not everyone can go to Yale,” he says. They walk on, this time a few feet apart.
That night, both unable to sleep, Bob and Charlotte meet by chance in the hotel lounge. She asks what he’s doing in Japan, and he says “I’m getting two million dollars to advertise a whiskey when I could have done a play.” She tells Bob that she came to Japan with her husband because “I wasn’t doing anything.” When he asks what she does, she says, “I’m stuck. I don’t know what I am supposed to be.”
Later, walking together on the busy streets of Tokyo, they see Bob’s face on a huge neon sign advertising whiskey. Everyone they meet—in the hotel, at the commercial filming, at a party—is all upbeat and engaged in their lives. Bob and Charlotte, by contrast, are without passion, barely alive. Like she says, they’re stuck. Relationships with their spouses lack feeling, restricted to schedules, appointments, and home improvement.
Throughout the film, Bob’s character is downbeat. He never smiles; his comments are clever, cryptic, and ironic but without real humor. When he confesses that he chose to give up the chance to engage in his life’s passion for the sake of the money, we get the sense that he has been making this trade-off his entire life, following convention, rather than his intuition, thereby consigning himself to purgatory. Likewise, Charlotte’s character—nice enough on the surface—is without joy. On three occasions, we see her being ignored or dismissed, twice by her husband, once by her telephone friend. She craves affirmation, but is denied it by the people supposed to be closest to her. As a result, she is lost.
Charlotte’s character is a metaphor for the unhappiness created by lack of intimacy, the greatest of human needs. Intimacy comprises acknowledgment, acceptance, trust, love, and a sense of connection with others and with the world at large. Without intimacy, we are left with isolation and personal suffering. In our modern world, we are experiencing diminished intimacy and courtesy, creating anxieties and social problems. It is the downside of the growth of technology, automation, and global competition that emphasize efficiency and the speediness needed to meet shorter deadlines. We are allowing ourselves to be distracted, paying less attention to each other while keeping an eye and ear open for the message that might come through on our electronic device.
Bob and Charlotte start to share their stories and dreams, listening and laughing, as they develop warm feelings for each other. But when they eventually part, Charlotte is left to wander the crowded Tokyo streets waiting for her husband to return from a shoot, while Bob heads for the airport, back to his safe, comfortable, soulless life. The film is a poignant portrayal of how a sense of meaning can be eroded by ambition, materialism, and insensitivity, exacerbated by modern lifestyles and values. Viewers take heart, though, that Bob and Charlotte touched each other and had a glimpse of something meaningful.