Lost in Movieland

Instead of American Splendor, we ended up watching Lost in Translation and I'm really glad we did. I thought Sofia Coppola's first film, The Virgin Suicides, was one of the better indie flicks I've seen, and Lost really cemented my notion that she's a damn fine director. Suicides and Lost both have a slightly different way of telling the story than do most conventional films; I first labelled it a "female" method of storytelling, but I think that label is far too restrictive and not descriptive enough. It's slightly dreamlike, but manages to convey an enormous range of emotions without either hitting you over the head or taking the time to explain each one. For example, when two people are having a conversation, most directors will use the "opposite POV" camera technique, where the camera is on the actor doing the talking as if the audience were looking through the silent actor's eyes. So it's talk-cut, talk-cut, talk-cut. Instead, Coppola shot almost every conversation between Scarlet Johansson and Bill Murray with both actors in frame at the same time.

The effect was not only to create a more intimate feeling, but it allowed the actor's facial expressions to feed off each other, as happens in real life. The only time Coppola used the "opposite POV" thing was at the end, where both actors hugged each other but were beginning to seperate.

I wasn't as impressed with Bill Murray's acting job as I expected to be. He did a great job of portraying a tired actor in his late 50s, but whenever he started joking, I thought, "hey, Bill Murray!" And then I started thinking about Ghostbusters and Caddyshack. It was distracting, but I can't imagine anyone else in that role.

It's kind of funny that I'm praising Sofia so much, because I really don't care for her father's films, and when Suicides came out, the buzz wasn't that Sofia Coppola made a great movie, it was that Francis Ford Coppola's daughter was making a movie. She's really come into her own, and her style is nothing like the New York school her dad employs - it's a lot more LA, which I've always been drawn towards.

This was a hell of a film, and there are a lot worse ways to spend two hours of your life.