It’s been 2 years, 9 months, and 16 days since “Lost in Translation” was released and we’re still talking about it. At least one of us is. Join C&V’s own Matthew as he explores the issues of identity and the fragmented self found in Sofia Coppola’s film.
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Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation provides several insights into the context of its own creation and the ideologies at work within the scope of the film’s narrative. Specifically, the sequence where, because of the insomnia tandem to jetlag, Bob and Charlotte end up in the bar together late at night and ultimately disclose their reasons for traveling to Japan. This sequence pointedly illustrates themes of fragmentation of the self, the struggles of the postmodern individual to recover his or her identity from the clutches of a highly commodified atmosphere, women as vulnerable without male accompaniment, and capitalism as a governing force behind human interaction (such as marriage, travel, scholastic achievement, etc.). Cultural theorist Celeste Olalquiaga, in her Megalopolis, describes psychasthenia—a condition where an organism cannot differentiate itself from its surroundings—as a condition of the postmodern individual. She writes: “Incapable of demarcating the limits of its own body, lost in the immense area that circumscribes it, the psychasthenic organism proceeds to abandon its own identity to embrace the space beyond […] vanishing as a differentiated entity,” and what is more, “[d]islocated by this ongoing trompe l’oeil, the body seeks concreteness in the consumption of food and goods, saturating its senses to the maximum” (2). Lost in Translation, then, can be seen as a film that chronicles a stint in the journey of two dislocated characters that must interact with a foreign milieu through familiar methods of consumption with hopes to ground themselves as differentiated individuals within a commercialized culturescape.
From a technical perspective, this sequence relies heavily on the physical juxtaposition of the characters as they engage in idle dialogue with one another. It is important to note that the Japanese server, when he is in the shot, situates himself between Bob and Charlotte. He stands between them when he takes Charlotte’s order, and he reaches between them to serve Charlotte her drink, somewhat disrupting their conversation. This act serves to represent more than a simple inconvenience in dialogue, but rather exemplifies the condition of the characters throughout the entire film. They are united in their misunderstanding of the foreignness of Japan as it dualistically interferes with their ability to communicate with one another as well as it binds them together in a mutual incomprehension of a foreign ethos; the waiter operates at the boundary of Bob and Charlotte’s collective apprehension of the ‘Other’. It is possible for them to associate with the waiter because he speaks English and works in an international hotel that appears to be filled mostly with Americans, but he has access to a veritable stockpile of cultural property that the Americans could never possibly approach. Thus, Bob and Charlotte are mutually estranged by the Japanese, and their struggle to identify themselves in relation to the ‘Other’ surfaces in their physical relation to the waiter: he directly transects their conversation with his arm, bursting their bubble of awareness to remind them of the presence of the unknown/unfamiliar in their midst. Furthermore, the editing of the sequence is entirely comprised of jump cuts, which starkly bounce back and forth between the characters to fragment their dialogue and visually challenge the coherence of their personalities. Each of the Americans is disoriented in their current environment, and it is a struggle to reclaim a firm sense of self or belonging in the foreign setting within which they find themselves. The lines that separate Bob from Charlotte become blurred as their identities are consumed by their surroundings and they attempt to counter that dissolution of identity through consumption of goods, such as drinks from the bar, cigarettes, taxi rides to night clubs, sushi from local restaurants, medical care, and any other amenities they might desire.
Another significant feature of this sequence stems from the level of the narrative as Bob and Charlotte speak to one another on what ultimately composes their respective identities. Primarily, it seems, is the depth of fiscal background which drives each of the characters’ actions. While Charlotte seems indifferent to, or even disdainful of material wealth (she studied philosophy in school) it is the determining factor of Bob’s existence. As a movie star, Bob would definitely be rich, but as he is paid two million dollars to endorse Santory whiskey, it becomes clear that money is his defining characteristic, for it affords him nearly unlimited consumptive capability. Moreover, Bob’s interests appear to lie in the material worth of Charlotte as he inquires after her area of study in college, to which, upon hearing “Philosophy,” he makes a joke about the lack of potential for generating wealth in that field. The somewhat confused look on his face indicates that Bob is unable to relate to an area of expertise that does not directly translate to disposable income, of which he has plenty, for he seems receptive to Charlotte’s suggestion that he purchase a Porsche to deal with his mid-life crisis. Even were he to forego the purchase of a Porsche, the fact that he could buy one is enough to provide a ground for Bob’s identity as a consumptive individual; he is still shaped by what goods and services he can buy, and he carries the notion of commodity fetishism beyond the mere price of the object and renders value based upon his ability to locate himself from items. Charlotte is similarly molded, even if she renounces material wealth, for she is of a privileged background as a Yale graduate and wife to a well-to-do photographer.
In spite of Charlotte’s potential denial of the importance of money, she likely either refuses to or fails to recognize her own financial position of privilege. While she may not generate income on her own, her husband must do fairly well as a celebrity photographer, for her ability to casually travel to Japan for lack of anything better to do requires a large degree of financial comfort. Charlotte’s position is articulated by this failure to acknowledge the respective ease of her lifestyle and the requisites for such a life. Perhaps she does not labor to earn money, and perhaps she does not care for money as displayed by her deferral to Bob’s consumptiveness in regards to the Porsche, but her ability to ignore money is spawned from the fact that she is not financially distressed, and her suggestion that Bob should consume as a palliative measure to his personal problems reflects a latent investment on her part in the identifying power of consumption. Charlotte is a consumer without a profession, who does not know what she wants to do with her life, but who, in all likelihood, will not ever have to make a decision about her life as long as she remains with her husband, or another male supporter.
Consequently, this dependency upon males unearths another aspect of the film that is not so easily realized: Charlotte essentially plays the role of a ‘yuppie’ housewife, and she is therefore portrayed as incapable of caring for herself. She has a degree in a less-than-lucrative field, she is married to a man that she does not love, and she falls for a wealthy movie star who, ideally, would allow her to proceed in a lifestyle where her largest concern would be what color carpet to put in her personal library at home (to accompany Bob’s study of course). Bob’s attitude towards Charlotte indicates that he sees such a need, and therefore attempts to play the role of protective father/mentor, in addition to a love interest. All of her opinions on fame and fortune (as well as everything else) are validated by her relationships to the opposite sex and the power she derives from them—such as her marriage, or Bob’s affections—and the root of those relationships can be seen reduced to one thing: money. Charlotte’s ability to critique her relationships and to make that uninterested face and aloof “Oh” when Bob mentions his wage for the whiskey commercials are byproducts of the simple fact that she has access to enough financial resources to grant her the freedom to go to a bar late at night, smoke cigarettes, order a vodka tonic, and converse with a movie star, as well as to attend to all of the other luxury functions she desires. Her protest against wealth by ordering a vodka tonic in direct contradiction to Bob’s suggestion of Santory, and in turn against the source of his income, is a futile resistance, and in some ways is contradictory to the very nature of her existence as an upper-middle class American woman, for Charlotte is unlikely to ever confront a lack in funding for her indulgences.
Another notable aspect of the film is the setting of Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo is seen to be a technological Mecca of sorts—a technophiles dream—full of lights, data, commerce, electronics, research and development, etc. Of all places for this particular scenario to take place, Tokyo, from a commercial and mythical standpoint, is the ideal setting for a loss of identity to occur. The film depicts Tokyo as a continual party of consumption: drinking, eating, relaxing, and buying goods and services with no potential consequences for the characters involved due to the size of their bank accounts. The only work that takes place is photography and commercial endorsements, which ultimately require no work on the part of Bob, only his time and his image as they directly translate into monetary value. Tokyo, one of the most expensive cities in the world, is otherwise open to Bob and Charlotte, who are not forced to heed any legal or social regulations by virtue of their collective purchasing power and their foreignness to the locale. Thus, it is clear that, despite the subsumption of Bob and Charlotte into their fast-paced context of exchange, they are endowed with a unique ability to effectively buy their identities, to sell themselves for profit, to exchange money for the goods and services that differentiate them from the amorphous mass of people across the globe, as well as from the world stage and all of the transactions that comprise the realm of the market economy.
All this being said, Lost in Translation is more than merely a film about love or two people meeting in a foreign country and struggling to understand the natives, but is rather a film that conveys a universal culture of exchange that offers a small amount of comfort to those members of the middle to upper class who can afford to buy their way out of the psychasthenic condition. The film itself utters the circumstances of its own condition as a film that operates within the same boundaries as the characters by employing Bob and Charlotte as the specular image of postmodern humanity. Perhaps the pair is involved in a struggle to synthesize its own culture with that of a drastically different ‘Other’—to appropriate the necessary cultural resources before moving to the next transaction—but the depth of their toil is rooted in a much more complex set of interactions that dictate the very cultures that they hope to integrate into their own perceptions of identity. Indeed, the characters are lost, but they seem more lost within a series of efforts to define themselves than they were from the start, for they attempt to transfer the commercial sphere into the realm of the individual and to subsequently place the two domains in dialogue with one another to produce something concrete where before there was only dynamism. It therefore seems that the duo is fated to reside in the rather nebulous area of undifferentiation—as mere consequences of their commercial activity—and hence as empty projections of the products that they endorse, buy, or sell in the endless effort towards self-realization.
Works Cited
Olalquiaga, Celeste. Megalopolis. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1992.
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