Lost in Translation

Watched this because I heard “everyone” praise it. Was expecting to like it, and was really looking forward to watching it, but not only disappointed me, it also bored me out of my mind.

I understand that a lot of people who like this movie will say that there’s a lot of “underlying meaning” and is pretty realistic in that you can kind of relate to it, but I was wholly unable to do any of these things because no matter how hard I tried to look for deeper meaning, to like the movie, to make excuses for the movie being so slow/deliberate, I was still, really, really bored, and I cannot help but classify this simply as “That movie where the protagonists are bored and disenchanted with the weirdness of Japan.”

I couldn’t find any other meaning besides that foreigners would be really lost in Japan because of the culture shock and difference of language, and due to this fact the two foreigners in the story were drawn to each other. I can see absolutely no other point! And also that they were both unsatisfied with their lives. That was it. NO OTHER MEANING.

And to express this point, Lost in Translation dragged on for one hour and forty-two minutes with sparse dialogue, even sparser action, nearly no background music except for the ones in the setting (ie. bars, karaoke, etc), and just mostly people sitting there looking at each other/out the window and looking pensive/confused. This movie seriously felt almost like 2.5 hours to me.

Also, the filming was pretty nice to look at, but it wasn’t THAT spectacular, and the only parts I was really interested in was when they focused on the Japanese setting. Also, the colours were kind of soft and faded, which was also nice, but it wasn’t high-grade eye candy or anything. And I will admit that Scarlett Johansson’s face is nice to look at, and she looked younger than I expected, but come on…

The sparse dialogue drove me insane in that, even though a few lines/events gave me a tiny chuckle, most of it had so much pausing and so. little. words.

Believe me, this is a pretty boring movie. I did like how it was set in Japan and helped me realize just how silly Japan could seem to foreigners, but seriously…why so slow! Here, have a 68/100.