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Get Four
|  | OCTOBER 21, 2003
By Thane Peterson A Lot to Be Gained in Translation Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation is hardly typical Tinseltown fare. It's time for an all-too-rare Oscar nomination for a female director If you don't believe Hollywood is one of the most sexist towns on earth, chew on this: In the 75-year history of the Academy Awards, no woman has won the Oscar for best director. No American woman has even been nominated. Since the awards were first launched in 1927, here's the sorry record chalked up by women directors so far: In 1974, Europe's Lina Wertmuller became the first woman to earn a nomination (for Seven Beauties) but lost out to John G. Avildsen, director of Rocky. In 1993, New Zealander Jane Campion was nominated for The Piano but didn't win. The Oscar went to Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List. A total of two nominations for women out of 370 best director contenders. My guess is that Sofia Coppola will break that long dry spell for American women by garnering a best director nomination for her new movie, Lost in Translation. I doubt she'll win, mainly because I expect Mystic River to dominate -- and probably win the best director award for Clint Eastwood (see BW Online, 10/14/03, "Eastwood Hits, Tarantino Misses"). But in some ways Lost in Translation is a more important movie because it represents such a departure from the usual Hollywood way of doing things. Here are some of the reasons this movie is so different from what you normally find at your local multiplex: • It's literate and intelligent -- and also funny. • It's personal and stems from an emotional, artistic sensibility. • It's international in perspective. • It's a love story without tackiness, sex, or violence. • It doesn't follow the usual, rigid Hollywood plot formula of conflict and resolution. • Its main stars aren't conventionally good-looking and don't have collagen-inflated lips and chiseled physiques. • It's visually beautiful. • It isn't quirky. Of course, the moneybags in Hollywood could care less about all that. What's catching their attention is the fact that Lost in Translation will probably turn a huge profit. The exact amount of the budget isn't being released, but based on Coppola's comments and published estimates, the movie probably cost $2 million or $3 million to make -- a pittance in Tinseltown -- and has grossed $21 million in its first month. That has made Coppola, 32, the hottest young director around. I hope she'll use her new cachet to make more movies like Lost in Translation -- and that her example will pave the way for other directors, especially women, to do the same. MOODS FOR MODERNS. At the moment, Coppola is the only woman in a band of young auteurs who represent the best and brightest of Hollywood's next generation. Other promising young female directors, such as 36-year-old Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), can't match her talent, in my opinion. Her main rivals are male directors such as her husband, Spike Jonze, 34, who won an Oscar nomination in 1999 for Being John Malkovich; Wes Anderson, 34, whose movies include Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums; and Paul Thomas Anderson, 33, who directed Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and last year's Adam Sandler vehicle, Punch Drunk Love. My only problem with the young male directors is that they tend to fall back on quirkiness to make their movies distinctive, to the point of making quirkiness a formula. I'm talking about stuff like the guided tours around actor John Malkovich's brain in Being John Malkovich and the frogs that rain down from the sky in Magnolia. Coppola doesn't bother with that sort of thing. She just comes straight at you with an unabashed art film that unfolds at a languid, European pace -- but is also sufficiently unpretentious to appeal to a wide audience. Lost in Translation was shot in Tokyo, mainly at the ultramodern Park Hyatt Hotel. Part of the movie's distinctive look comes from the mirrored surfaces that are everywhere in a skyscraper hotel, as well as the panoramic city views out the windows. Most of the rest of the movie has the feel of a documentary because it was shot with a lightweight camera in Tokyo's streets, bars, restaurants, and apartments. Grinding technorock, sappy lounge ballads, and Japanese TV shows constantly blare in the background. Otherwise, you mainly hear the sort of ambient noise you would if you were there. LINGERING EYE. Bill Murray delivers one of his best performances ever as Bob Harris, an aging American movie star who's in Tokyo to shoot an ad for a Japanese whiskey company. Unable to sleep and deep in midlife crisis, Harris initially wants to just finish his shooting and go home to his two daughters and his passive-aggressive nag of a wife. But the distiller is paying him so much -- $2 million -- that he feels obligated to stay over a few extra days to do a publicity appearance on a wacky Japanese TV show. Eventually, Bob hooks up with Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a bored and mildly depressed twentysomething American woman who has accompanied her fashion-photographer husband on a photo shoot in Tokyo. Bob and Charlotte gradually develop a friendship that becomes intimate in every respect, except physically. As usual, Murray wrings more humor out of a deadpan look than any comedian since Jack Benny. One of the funniest scenes comes when he's sitting in a hospital waiting room trying to hold a conversation with an eccentric elderly man who doesn't speak English. Two very proper Japanese women sitting behind them struggle unsuccessfully not to laugh. It's a light interlude, but it also displays Coppola's skill and confidence as a director. She shoots the scene so that at first you barely notice the two women in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen. But she lets the camera linger, and once you do notice them you can't stop cracking up at them cracking up at Murray. WHISPERED WORDS. Murray's performance is subtle and quite moving. When he isn't playing up his character's hamminess, sadness and weary resignation constantly flit across his craggy, pitted face. Johansson, another great deadpan actor, gives an Oscar-worthy performance. There are some wonderful shots looking from the hotel-room ceiling as they lie on the bed talking, she in a fetal position facing Murray, who lies spread-eagled on his back. They never touch until the very end of the scene, when he gently puts his hand on her bare foot. This movie has no pat plot turns. It's radical for a Hollywood production, partly because it's not about much of anything, except a man and a woman meeting, getting to know one another, and parting. The culmination -- if you can call it that -- occurs when Bob, on his way to the airport, jumps out of his limo, chases Charlotte down the street, embraces her, and whispers something in her ear. I saw the movie twice and listened carefully, and I still don't know what he said, except that he used the word "love" in some context. It's an ambiguous ending, but it works. When they part, you have the feeling they'll never see one another again. Lost in Translation is far from perfect. Some scenes, such as a spat between Charlotte and Bob in a sushi bar, seem incomplete. And having Francis Ford Coppola for a father obviously gives Sofia Coppola considerable advantages over other young directors. But she also has prodigious talent and artistic courage to burn. I hope she'll now have many happy returns, both in making her own movies and in serving as an inspiration to others.  Peterson is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek Online. Follow his weekly Moveable Feast column, only on BusinessWeek Online Edited by Patricia O'Connell
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