15 Years On: <i>Lost in Translation</i>

15 Years On: Lost in Translation

Fifteen years ago, writer-director Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation became a surprise hit, its particular melancholic spirit resonating deeply with far more people than Coppola ever imagined possible. After all, this was very much a personal film, forged out of her own loneliness and existential angst over feeling disconnected from everyone and everything in her life. Clearly, many of us could relate. Fifteen years on, many of us still do.

On a few occasions on social media recently, I've noticed some viewers reassessing the film through the lens of contemporary understandings of historically cliched portrayals of relationships between older men and younger women in film. For some, the relationship between Bill Murray's Bob and Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte—mostly platonic beyond a few embraces and chaste kisses, but over the course of the movie it's obvious that each character is tempted to take things to the next level—has taken on a whole new aspect in the era of #MeToo. I understand these criticisms, but feel they're mostly misplaced when it comes to Coppola's film.

Coppola was attempting to make sense of her own struggles with feelings of isolation and an inability to make connections with other people. I mean, who are we to tell her that her movie is now problematic? These were her feelings, writ large on screen, in all their chaotic, messy, and yes, problematic, glory.

Feeling disconnected from the world around you and then having a brief, yet profound connection with someone who feels similarly alone doesn’t always make perfect sense. Many criticisms of the Bob and Charlotte relationship seem to be trying too hard to project a neat and clean morality onto a movie that’s all about how messy and complicated human connection can be. As Kathryn Bigelow once said, "Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was...no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time."

With Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola examined how sometimes two people at different stages of their lives who feel lost at sea can help each other, even if only briefly, to feel alive again. Who can't relate to that?

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