Sofia Coppola’s "Lost in Translation" is a funny, bittersweet movie that uses cultural dislocation as a metaphor for people who have gotten lost in their own lives. The movie contains priceless slap-stick from Bill Murray, finely tuned performances by Murray and the beautiful Scarlett Johansson and a visual and aural design that cultivates a romantic through melancholy mood. In only her second feature, Coppola has made a poised, intelligent film that nicely balances laughs with a poignancy rarely seen in American movies. If Focus Features markets "Lost in Translation" carefully, this most original comedy could win audiences well beyond art houses.
Bob Harris (Murray) is a grumpy movie star in town to shoot a whiskey commercial. He is not only plagued by jet lag and gloom over a deteriorating marriage of many years, he is also in the midst of a midlife crisis that dampens his spirits but not his wit.
Charlotte (Johansson) , the neglected wife of a photographer, experiences a similar air-condl-tioned nightmare. Married two years, she already feels lost in the relationship, unable to partici-pate in her husband’s career or pinpoint what she wants out of life. When she ventures into the city, she is confronted by a distorted version of Western modernity.
These two people discover each other late at night at the bar. Neither one can sleep. A friend-ship evolves in their mutual isolation.
Coppola sees in Tokyo’s crowded, neon-lit urban landscape a society estranged from its own culture. The night is filled with pleasure-seekers obsessed by games, toys and American pop culture. Only when Charlotte takes a train to Kyoto is she able to experience the old Japan of ancient temples and gardens, tea houses and kimono-clad figures. This role fits Murray like his own skin. A middle-aged burnout who sees no challenges on his horizon gradually changes into a man revitalized by another alienated soul. His comic touch enriches the character with a self-deprecating wit and in a few sequences, a rubbery physicality that earns sustained laughs. Johansson makes Charlotte’s loneliness and disillusionment palpable as the woman is cut off from life in ways she never imagined.
Using high-speed film stock, cinematographer Lance Aeord gives the glaring neon and num-bingly sleek interiors a kind of romantic sheen. The score produced by Brian Reitzell created out of Japanese musical themes and "Tokyo dream-pop" adds to the sense of an Eastern city that has succumbed in large measure to Western culture.
The word "slapstick" underlined in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ______.
A．farce
B．soap opera
C．idol play
D．science fiction