Jeremy’s Tophunder №72: Lost in Translation

7 min readJun 12, 2020

As someone who has battled insomnia for their entire life (case in point: I’m typing these words at 4:54am), doubly so when sleeping in beds other than the one at my home, Lost in Translation is a movie that speaks to me directly in a way that very few movies do.

As someone who, from time to time, can experience crushing bouts of depression, loneliness, boredom, and general existential dread, Lost in Translation is a movie that speaks to me directly in a way that very few movies do.

Throughout my life, I’ve found kindred spirits in people that either (a) can’t fall asleep and can’t help but stay up all night, or (b) people who don’t want the good times to end, so they force themselves to stay awake. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are certainly more Column A than Column B, but nevertheless, their friendship develops because of the simple fact that neither one of them can fall asleep. While I can’t say that I’ve ever made friends because of my insomnia, I can think of more than a handful of relationships in my life that have been strengthened by shared experiences between the hours of 3am-6am when we either can’t or won’t go to bed.

There’s something incredibly genuine about the relationship that grows between Murray and Johansson, partly out of necessity (they’re the only two American people awake), partly out of bizarre serendipity (they’re somehow both experiencing the same uncertainty in their professional and personal lives despite wildly different backgrounds). It doesn’t hurt that the two of them have a strangely phenomenal chemistry, despite their 34-year age gap.

The movie was written with Murray in mind, and writer and director Sofia Coppola has said that if Murray turned down the role, she would have scrapped the idea altogether. It took Murray some convincing, but he finally agreed, although he never actually signed a contract. Coppola wasn’t 100 percent sure that he was doing the movie until he actually showed up in Tokyo. Murray’s role (Bob Harris) is kind of an interesting one. In some of his more goofy scenes with Charlotte (Johansson’s character), it seems like he’s just playing a fictionalized version of Bill Murray. But for much of the movie, it seems like Harris is genuinely unsure of what he’s supposed to be doing in his career. He says he’s making $2 million to endorse the Japanese whiskey, when he could be doing a play. That prompts a question that never really gets answered — are we supposed to assume that his career is tanking and he needs the cash? Or are we supposed to think that he’s taking advantage of a cash grab he doesn’t really need because he’s trying to hang onto his declining stardom and he thinks (or wants to think) a play is beneath him? It’s never really addressed, and I’m not sure it actually matters. It’s just another layer of uncertainty that helps to sell his moroseness. Even he doesn’t know what’s going on in his career.

They really lucked out with Scarlett Johansson. She had been around for a few years, but certainly hadn’t broken out yet. Her role obviously isn’t as integral as Murray’s is (I’m kind of with Coppola here — I can’t think of another actor on the planet that could have made this movie work as well as it does), but it’s obviously still a big piece of the movie. Would it have worked if Charlotte is played by a B+ actor? Probably. But getting Johansson puts the movie over the top and sells the relationship between Harris and Charlotte, which is the backbone of the movie and needs support from both sides.

Unspoken subtext makes up a lot of the movie, and while I’m not usually the kind of guy that looks to dig too deep into it, I think there are a lot of good tid-bits that give the movie extra juice. For example, I think that Giovanni Ribisi is probably cheating on Charlotte, and I think at the very least, he has some kind of feelings for Anna Faris’ character. I’m not sure whether or not Charlotte knows it — on one hand, it seems way too obvious for her to not notice anything, but on the other, she doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would notice it and do nothing. Perhaps she suspects, and that’s part of her motivation for pursuing Harris, although her choices don’t really seem to suggest any kind of romantic interest in Harris until much later.

I want to know what happens to Bob and Charlotte after the movie ends. It doesn’t seem like they exchanged information — part of me assumes that they never see each other again. If that’s true, part of me loves it, and part of me is heartbroken by it. It’s a strange feeling. They clearly shared an incredibly strong connection, apparently much stronger than either of them were willing to admit (for a variety of very valid reasons), so it’s sad to think that they just go their separate ways and never see each other again. But it’s also possible that their connection was tied to a specific time and place — when they had nobody else to turn to while they were stuck in Tokyo for longer than they wanted to be. Maybe being each other’s savior for a few days in a strange city was all they really needed from each other, and it’s fittingly beautiful that they go back to their normal lives on their own. By the end of the movie, I think both of them realize that their marriages aren’t what they want them to be. Bob and his wife just don’t seem to be on the same page, and Charlotte and John probably just got married too young, before they realized they don’t want the same things. But more than that, I think while they both realize that their marriages aren’t satisfying anymore, they would barely admit it to themselves, let alone admit it to each other, and they clearly aren’t ready to admit exactly how meaningful their relationship with each other has become.

I want to think that Charlotte comes to her senses and realizes that John isn’t the right guy for her. And I want to think that Bob comes to his senses and realizes that his 25-year marriage is too important to throw away. Ultimately, that’s the main reason I think I lean towards hoping that Bob and Charlotte never see each other again.

Lost in Translation is a movie that I love to watch in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, especially if I’m in a rather melancholy mood. I wouldn’t call it a feel-good movie, but I’d say it’s a movie that makes me feel better when I’m feeling down. It’s funny, but not fun, and it’s bittersweetly hopeful but heartbreaking, all at the same time. It’s not an all-the-time movie like the ones I have ranked in my Top 20, but when I’m in the mood for it, Lost in Translation is truly one of my favorite movies ever. It’s a weird balance — the more I watch it, the more I enjoy it, but if I’m watching it a lot and feeling it resonate really strongly, it’s probably because I’m in a dark place. Best case scenario, I can drop in for two hours, spend a week in Tokyo with these characters, and be reminded that sometimes I feel lonely and lost, and then pop back out and enjoy the finer things in life. It’s a movie that I love dearly, but not all the time, and for that reason, it’s №72 on my list.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

2. A Few Good Men

3. The Social Network

4. Dazed and Confused

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

8. The Departed

9. Saving Private Ryan

10. Inglourious Basterds

11. The Big Short

12. The Prestige