SAMSARA LOST IN TRANSLATION
Sheet
Address Sofia Coppola
Production Sofia Coppola, Ross Katz, Francis Ford Coppola
Screenplay Sofia Coppola
Music Kevin Shields
Lance Acord Photography
Mount Towako Kuwajima, Tomomi Nishio
cast Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Anna Faris, Giovanni Ribisi
The title plays on several meanings. "Lost in transportation," he highlights the sake of argument, two travelers Americans who do not know each other, match in Tokyo temporarily. One is actor advertising and has traveled to film a clip from a Japanese whiskey. The other with her husband, a photographer for bands and actors who are on a tour. Both are being found in the hotel you are staying.
The other meaning, "Lost in Translation" has several levels. On the one hand it refers to the situation of two Westerners in Japan, immersed in a world culturally and linguistically unfamiliar with difficulty establishing personal relationships with residents. The director of the film itself has said that this situation has personally experienced, led him to explore the needs of a human being in such circumstances.
In general, travelers to work and Tourism accommodated, although English can move with relative ease by any country in the world, the field of communication tends to be limited to environments for travelers and hotels, some tourist attractions, some restaurants, taxis, etc, and not given to engage everyday with people who you are. The director takes this fact with another related phenomenon, namely that it is creating an affinity and complicity between guests of the hotel or between people who agree common places for passengers, of course, leaving the tour group context in which relations are closer.
For a solo traveler in such circumstances, the cultural gap and the inability to communicate in daily life, even for basic needs, makes the confusion grows. Although on a practical level is achieved with basic adjustment on the environment, there may be experiences of disorientation to a more internal level, related to the customs, lifestyle, social values, etc.. On the other hand, the confinement will emerge by feelings of loneliness that have a cumulative effect over time. While a lonely days may be appealing to almost anyone, discovering unusual places, proving in novel situations, etc. novelty game ends soon, tourist interest is high and the traveler begins to need personal relationship. Many people have sought ability palliative company, to "go in search" of a relationship even
surface. And in any case there is always the appeal of the company available in a commercial sense of the relationship. But in the case of our players that are unhappy.
So, as part of this process that explores the film, the characters begin to establish a distant relationship, based on the coincidence in public areas (the lobby, elevator, cafe or nightclub, etc.) . Little by little creating a "sense of belonging", a certain "sameness" shared "neighborhood travel, affinity and complicity for observation allows us to recognize in the other the same difficulties as you pass. Thus this approach and encourages the encounter. However, the "contact" in these circumstances is subject to constraints of the status of the traveler, mutual anonymity, timeliness, discretion and respect, etc.. Any approach beyond the "right thing" might break the thin thread of human contact.
The film shows a process of rapprochement, a process of personal contact. Simultaneously, the dislocation in which they live, that distance of the known world, that feeling in solitude against the unknown and alien world, leads them to consider from this new perspective that everything is based on his life, his supporters, their meanings, their values. And in a way make contact with a loneliness greater, with a certain absurdity of life, with a lack of meaning in their lives, say the universal and existential meaninglessness. Found within himself the self-deception, dependency, and enter into crisis delusion and attachment to various elements of "ordinary life."
This unveiling of existence, the protagonists are engaging in a dialogue process help them little by little, day by day to unravel the protections that are implicit lifestyles assumed to be necessary and appropriate. And this occurs at the same time presenting each of them will, knowing, wondering and wondering, in a dialogue of confidences about their troubles, frustrations and disappointments.
The characters are male and female, heterosexual, and the relationship that arises and moves by the need to contact, is devoid of any sexual charge, going off the topic of sex as a compensator of loneliness and anxiety about the meeting with oneself. Over time, the film flirts with that possibility, but is gradually highlighting their greatest need is on record of friendship, not lasting, just the sincere friendship of the I-Thou encounter.
In contrast, there are nods to some sexopatologías of love as they are, in general, relations reified and turned into an object, the type of prostitution, compulsive sex, sex punitive, the commercial company and all related pathologies narcissism and borderline personality disorders (low self-esteem, unstable identity and regard the other as a useful object to meet our needs and purposes.)
However, the relationship that are engaging our characters are real, human, personal. They are each identified in certain areas and this is allowing them to treat themselves with humanity and mutual respect. Dialogue with each other they sound in their own internal dialogue and helps to clear in the emerging crisis.
A second meaning of "Lost in Translation." Is that its two protagonists are on two ends of a single network of lifelines. He enters his fifties, her twenties. He is back on many things, the crisis of middle age advanced, the question of what one has done or / and is doing with her life, she is beginning, making decisions about the course of your life that will determine the course of their future, the uncertainty of being right or wrong, or miss the best options for his life, a crisis of uncertainty. He has a family that has just tune except superficial and custom, a woman dumped in the decoration of domestic life, a personal relationship almost exhausted, she is starting a consolidated relationship with an absent husband, dedicated to work and other hobbies. He does not know if it's too late to change your life and let go of everything, she does not know if it is too early to change and drop what you have to choose. He has sacrificed his vocation as an actor to work on what matters most gives money, she has sacrificed her career to accompany her husband.
Both, regardless of the displacement in a foreign culture, bringing within it the seeds of a personal crisis, with much of evolutionary crisis (of his age), manifested by disorientation, loneliness and empty. Indeed in Japan, where traditional two topics of their culture: the emptiness and hacinación, austerity and overstimulation, the not-doing and the frantic activity and business enterprise. In the land of the rising sun, our characters suffer from insomnia, and is the night that leads them to be.
Their lives need to be translated to the language of an age and a time to the other. This translation is given during the meeting between the two. Each is nourished by the vital perspective of others and mutual confrontation. One reflects on the youth and the other on maturity, one about freedom and the other on the commitment, enthusiasm and one on another on the hyper-realism, etc.
The relationship goes through the topics of age, by the adventure, parent-child dimension (without dyes Oedipus), and is coming to the friendship in its deepest sense. He finds his soul personified (intrinsic polarity female), she finds her animus personified (polarity intrinsic male). And a love story emerges. In the form of friendship, a relationship open and genuine at the time, knowing that will not last. Both have shaped their lives, the change or not, will follow after them. And the meeting did not lead them to continue living together. They know.
And yet, it's time to say goodbye. Both are slow to acknowledge the love they have found in the other and just politely say goodbye. And after the departure in the style of the best romance in the movies, he turns to look, this time to declare their mutual love, in a final kiss, and re-separated, almost certainly never to be seen anymore. In fact, a antiromántico final.
The film poses the existential situation of being lost @ y, as it says in its advertising slogan: "everyone needs to be found." Or be in and the other, which is the same.
Juan José Díaz
