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Editorial:
"There's Nothing New About Change"
Anna Rankin
Comment:
Embracing the Stranger
Denise Wright
From
the Director: Change and Decay – so what's new?
David W Porter
Alwyn
Thomson
Ethel White
A
Changing Church
Chris Easton
Women,
the Church and Change
Lesley Carroll
Interview
with Noel Fallows: Multi-cultural Church Life
Anna Rankin
Urban
Grit
Ken Groves
Higher
Throne
Keith
Getty & Kristyn Lennox
2003
Conference: Reconciliation – Illusion or Elusive?
What's
Jesus got to do with Forgiveness?
Stuart Noble
Review:
Lost in Translation
Gareth Higgins
Review:
The Church Beyond the Congregation by James Thwaites
Claire Martin
Review:
A Time for Mission by Samuel Escobar
Ben
Walker
Review:
Against the Stream by David W Smith
Cheryl
Reid
Review:
Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998 by Patrick
Mitchel
David Hewitt
Review:
I was a teenage Catholic by Malachi O'Doherty
Fran
Porter
reviews:
LOST IN TRANSLATION
Directed by Sofia Coppola, Focus Features, 2003.
Reviewed by Gareth Higgins
BILL MURRAY'S hangdog vulnerability as one of Hollywood's wounded prophets has been a staple for cinemagoers since the heady days of Ghostbusters 20 years ago. He's an actor who seems committed to taking roles because the script is good enough that he actually wants to see the movie when it's over – hence his all too infrequent appearances at the multiplex. In Lost in Translation, the second film to be directed by Sofia Coppola, Murray reminds us that we so often see him in films – like Groundhog Day and The Royal Tenenbaums – that seek to reflect something meaningful about the world, rather than merely an escapist fantasy.
Like Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai, this is a movie about a white North American learning life lessons in Japan; thankfully, unlike Cruise, Murray doesn't have to kill anyone in order to mature. He's a has-been Hollywood star in Tokyo to film an ad for whiskey, making a quick $2 million for his effortless efforts. As luck, or fate, or chance, or movie magic would have it, he's staying in the same hotel as a young woman, played by Scarlet Johannsen, who has her own reasons for feeling disoriented and alone. Her performance is so good that you forget it's a film, and may fear that you have actually intruded on another person's real life.
They meet, they see in each other something familiar, they hang out, they kiss, they go home. And somehow, in the midst of this, we are reminded that ultimately we can only ever be at home in each other. These are two lonely people, for whom nothing satisfies apart from true community. Murray's character receives an impromptu visit from a sex worker in his hotel room, but he just wants to be alone – he knows that the solitude of his own company is infinitely preferable to the loneliness of meaningless intimacy. He looks out of place, in his silk kimono and free towelling slippers, or sipping the whiskey he's been paid to advertise while desperately trying to avoid contact with anyone else.
The film has been accused of trading in stereotypes – with Murray's height accentuated in a lift with a selection of small Japanese, the outrageous chat show host talking seemingly at a few hundred words per minute, and the culture of Asian politeness taken to extremes by the business cards given to him by almost everyone he meets. But, as with The Simpsons, every character in this movie is gently mocked, and loved for it; indeed, in the elevator scene, it is Murray who looks weird, the TV host seems like nothing more unusual than Tokyo's version of Ireland's own Graham Norton, and there is of course something to be said for being known for having a culture of kindness. Lost in Translation is firmly rooted in a city – the unobtrusive camera shows the noise, the smog, the lights, the mania, the peace of a Buddhist temple, and it knows how to observe without intrusion. Some scenes are alive with life's potential – a beautifully observed, hilarious moment occurs between Murray and an old guy in a hospital waiting room, both of them trying not to laugh too hard. It's the kind of cinematic moment that makes your pulse rise and your spirit soar – the feeling you get when you suddenly recall one of what Tennyson calls 'the best parts of a . . . life, the little, nameless . . . acts of kindness and of love'. Every frame is redolent with the sadness of a loss of community, and the last scene closes the story with nothing more human than the notion that life is ambiguous, incomplete. Christians aren't always the best at dealing with ambiguity – we want simple, clear answers, the certainty of a happy ending. But Lost in Translation is a reminder that life isn't like that. Like the best art, it's about what it means to be human. Some may not like this kind of film, for it has characters who appear to have existed before it started, and who will continue to exist afterward; there is no car chase nor exciting plot twist. Rather, it is a funny, delicate, character study, made by a young director who so obviously knows so much about life, and it has been highly acclaimed for good reason. We may all want to disappear sometimes, we may all feel that our souls are sometimes mislaid and wandering. In short, we are all lost in translation.
DR GARETH HIGGINS is a member of ECONI, a Lecturer in Reconciliation Studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Belfast and the author of How Movies Helped Save My Soul: Finding Spiritual Fingerprints in Culturally Significant Films (Relevant Books) 2003.
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