Lost in Translation
Sun, Oct. 5th, 2003 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterSome thoughts of the movie theater: There was a series of RotK posters lining one wall of Frodo, Aragorn, Gandalf and Arwen, individually. But the very slashy Frodo and Sam one was tucked away in a corner. Hrm...
It was a gorgeous movie. Maybe not the cinematography; I don't know, I didn't notice. But it so perfectly captured the strange detachment and loneliness you feel at four in the morning, jetlagged in an unfamiliar country and in a hotel room that's not your home. Strangely though, I also found it celebratory, but I think that's because I come from a different point of view. Mostly, the boy and I came out of it really missing Japan. I swear, Coppola must have stayed there sometime or something, because she got almost all the little details right -- the neon facade of Tokyo, including the funny animation of the signs (the concentric circles moving in, etc), the lace cloth covering in the back of the taxis, all those things.
It just goes to show how much one's experiences go into these things. I don't think I was the movie's target audience, or what the director thought the majority of the audience would be, because so many of the things that would come off as strange were nostalgic for me. I loved the ebb and flow of traffic at the giant crosswalk of Shibuya that I had watched from the second story Starbucks window, the little stores there selling who knows what, where I ogled at yukata and geta. I imagined I saw the 101 department store, where I bought two shirts on sale. And of course, there was the Park Hyatt Hotel through the entire thing, where I had spent four days during my very first trip to Japan back in high school. They've upgraded the entertainment systems in their rooms ;). They had the large arcade in Shibuya that I searched through for my bongo playing game, and they even shot the taiko drum game I played there! So many of the things that first come off as "look at how strange Japan is," like the over the top game shows, the Japanese-dubbed American movies/TV shows, the arcade games of playing taiko drums or guitars, even the political campaign trucks driving down the road. But I remember those, and they're so similar to what's in Taiwan that I felt homesick. Plus, it was great because I knew enough Japanese to know what pretty much everyone was saying, with the exception of the game show host, who was going way too fast.
So many small things rang true, like how the reception guy at the hospital tried desperately to explain to them that they needed to take a number and get in line, how the camera man was trying to direct Bob Harris. My very favorite part though was in the hospital, where a very old lady tried to ask Bob Harris/Bill Murray how long he'd been in Japan -- "Nihon ni nannen irun desu ka?" then.. "Ni - hon - ni - nan - nen - irun - de - su - ka?" operating on the assumption we all have, that if she talked slowly and distincly enough, she would magically make him understand Japanese. And to make it pitch perfect, there were the two Japanese ladies sitting in the row behind them completely cracking up.
But the film also managed to perfectly portray that sense of loneliness, of not knowing where you are. And Japan was just a place for that, because I've known that feeling at 2 in the morning in a London hotel, on the first day without my parents in Princeton, when I moved in in Mountain View. It was there in the Park Hyatt in Tokyo, the first night I stayed with my Japanese host family for what I thought would be two long months. It's that voice in your head, asking, what am I doing here? Who am I? It's being perfectly lost in a place even though you speak the language, so much so that even English becomes, metaphorically, a foreign tongue because you don't live wherever you are. It's my family, sitting in our hotel room in London with a deck of playing cards, bemoaning the lack of programming on the TV because somehow, without our routines back at home, we've forgotten how to talk to each other.
And the actress who played Charlotte almost looked like a Japanese girl herself, with her shaggy honey hair and her sweater vests, awkward and shy.
There was rhythm throughout all of it, especially in the late night conversation between Charlotte and Bob, where the camera is overhead so we can see the turning of only heads when they addressed each other, how Charlotte moved from lying on her back to curled up, like a comma. The gradual slowing down of conversation, words, and thought, as it hits 4:30 and sleep finally wins over jet lag. The conversations about life, and meaning, and love you can only have at that half hour between night and dawn, when you feel there are only two people awake in the world.
I miss Japan. I miss Taiwan too.
I also wonder what a movie made by someone come to America, jetlagged and homesick, would look like.
It was a gorgeous movie. Maybe not the cinematography; I don't know, I didn't notice. But it so perfectly captured the strange detachment and loneliness you feel at four in the morning, jetlagged in an unfamiliar country and in a hotel room that's not your home. Strangely though, I also found it celebratory, but I think that's because I come from a different point of view. Mostly, the boy and I came out of it really missing Japan. I swear, Coppola must have stayed there sometime or something, because she got almost all the little details right -- the neon facade of Tokyo, including the funny animation of the signs (the concentric circles moving in, etc), the lace cloth covering in the back of the taxis, all those things.
It just goes to show how much one's experiences go into these things. I don't think I was the movie's target audience, or what the director thought the majority of the audience would be, because so many of the things that would come off as strange were nostalgic for me. I loved the ebb and flow of traffic at the giant crosswalk of Shibuya that I had watched from the second story Starbucks window, the little stores there selling who knows what, where I ogled at yukata and geta. I imagined I saw the 101 department store, where I bought two shirts on sale. And of course, there was the Park Hyatt Hotel through the entire thing, where I had spent four days during my very first trip to Japan back in high school. They've upgraded the entertainment systems in their rooms ;). They had the large arcade in Shibuya that I searched through for my bongo playing game, and they even shot the taiko drum game I played there! So many of the things that first come off as "look at how strange Japan is," like the over the top game shows, the Japanese-dubbed American movies/TV shows, the arcade games of playing taiko drums or guitars, even the political campaign trucks driving down the road. But I remember those, and they're so similar to what's in Taiwan that I felt homesick. Plus, it was great because I knew enough Japanese to know what pretty much everyone was saying, with the exception of the game show host, who was going way too fast.
So many small things rang true, like how the reception guy at the hospital tried desperately to explain to them that they needed to take a number and get in line, how the camera man was trying to direct Bob Harris. My very favorite part though was in the hospital, where a very old lady tried to ask Bob Harris/Bill Murray how long he'd been in Japan -- "Nihon ni nannen irun desu ka?" then.. "Ni - hon - ni - nan - nen - irun - de - su - ka?" operating on the assumption we all have, that if she talked slowly and distincly enough, she would magically make him understand Japanese. And to make it pitch perfect, there were the two Japanese ladies sitting in the row behind them completely cracking up.
But the film also managed to perfectly portray that sense of loneliness, of not knowing where you are. And Japan was just a place for that, because I've known that feeling at 2 in the morning in a London hotel, on the first day without my parents in Princeton, when I moved in in Mountain View. It was there in the Park Hyatt in Tokyo, the first night I stayed with my Japanese host family for what I thought would be two long months. It's that voice in your head, asking, what am I doing here? Who am I? It's being perfectly lost in a place even though you speak the language, so much so that even English becomes, metaphorically, a foreign tongue because you don't live wherever you are. It's my family, sitting in our hotel room in London with a deck of playing cards, bemoaning the lack of programming on the TV because somehow, without our routines back at home, we've forgotten how to talk to each other.
And the actress who played Charlotte almost looked like a Japanese girl herself, with her shaggy honey hair and her sweater vests, awkward and shy.
There was rhythm throughout all of it, especially in the late night conversation between Charlotte and Bob, where the camera is overhead so we can see the turning of only heads when they addressed each other, how Charlotte moved from lying on her back to curled up, like a comma. The gradual slowing down of conversation, words, and thought, as it hits 4:30 and sleep finally wins over jet lag. The conversations about life, and meaning, and love you can only have at that half hour between night and dawn, when you feel there are only two people awake in the world.
I miss Japan. I miss Taiwan too.
I also wonder what a movie made by someone come to America, jetlagged and homesick, would look like.
(no subject)
Sun, Oct. 5th, 2003 07:34 am (UTC)She's spent a goodly amount of time there, yep. Some of the Japanese cast were friends of hers from when she was still doing photography.
(no subject)
Sun, Oct. 5th, 2003 07:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Sun, Oct. 5th, 2003 08:02 am (UTC)The conversation about first children also kind of got me. Really fine movie, all around.
(no subject)
Sun, Oct. 5th, 2003 07:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Sun, Oct. 5th, 2003 11:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Mon, Oct. 6th, 2003 01:38 am (UTC)