David Denby on Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation"

Photo from Erin Overbey's "Sunday Reading: A Cultural Review of the Aughts"

Erin Overbey, in her “Sunday Reading: A Cultural Review of the Aughts” (newyorker.com, January 23, 2022), provides “a selection of pieces—a culture review, of sorts—that capture the creative pulse of the early two-thousands.” It’s a wonderful collection that, for me, brings back many pleasurable memories. Included in her collection is David Denby’s brilliant “Heart Break Hotels” (The New Yorker, September 15, 2003), a review of two movies – Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation and Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things. Lost in Translation is my all-time favourite film. Denby’s piece is an excellent appreciation of it. He writes,

Coppola doesn’t punch up her scenes; she’s not interested in tension leading to a climax but in moods and states of being. She’s willing to let an awkward silence sit on the screen. Not much happens, but Coppola is so gentle and witty an observer that the movie casts a spell. 

It does indeed. For me, the essence of that spell is the exquisite melancholy of obstructed desire. Denby gets at this when he says of the film’s two main characters, played superbly by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, “The relationship is perched on the edge of eros.” I don’t know of any other movie that explores that edge so tenderly, beautifully, and perceptively. 

June 26, 2017 Issue

Last week, in response to Richard Brody’s “My Twenty-Five Best Films of the Century So Far” (newyorker.com, June 12, 2017), I posted my own list. For my #1 movie, I chose Sofia Coppola’s wonderful Lost in Translation (2003). Yesterday, reading Anthony Lane’s “Across the Divide,” in this week’s New Yorker, I was delighted to find a reference to Lost in Translation. Reviewing Coppola’s new film, The Beguiled, Lane writes,

Certainly, there is nothing here to match the crisp definition of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, who, in “Lost in Translation” (2003), stood out so clearly, and with such a funky need for one another, against the jet-lagged atmosphere. That remains Coppola’s finest hour, and, by her standards, the new work is amazingly unhip—touched with a gruesomeness that makes you giggle (“Go to the smokehouse and get me the saw, now”), yet too indolent to summon the energy for camp.

That “with such a funky need for one another, against the jet-lagged atmosphere” is very fine, perfectly capturing Lost in Translation’s bluesy romantic essence.

Other pleasures in this week’s issue:

1. “Goings On About Town: Art: Hilary Lloyd” (“Casually shot videos – of abstract imagery, women, the Adidas trefoil, blossoms – shed ambient light on painterly wallpaper”).

2. “Goings On About Town: Night Life: Wiki” (“Terse, frostbitten beats drag inventive new rhythms from grime and noise influences”).

3. Shauna Lyon’s “Tables For Two: Otway” (“the natural shades of toffee, rhododendron, and sunlight filling the lovely corner space”).

4. Peter Schjeldahl’s “Home and Away” (“Fiction blended with fact generates truths of life as it is lived and felt—or, perhaps, numbly not felt—by so many who labor in the penumbra of wealth. Gomez commands a Vermeer-esque, held-breath aura of transfigured ordinariness”).

My 25 Best Films of the Century So Far

Richard Brody’s “My Twenty-Five Best Films of the Century So Far” (newyorker.com, June 12, 2017) got me thinking about what my own list might look like. Here’s a quick stab at it:

1. “Lost in Translation” (2003, Sofia Coppola)

2. “Up in the Air” (2009, Jason Reitman)

3. “The Descendants” (2011, Alexander Payne)

4. “Incendies” (2010, Denis Villeneuve)

5. “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012, Kathryn Bigelow)

6. “The Kid with a Bike” (2011, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)

7. “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013, Martin Scorsese)

8. “The Social Network” (2010, David Fincher)

9. “Like Someone in Love” (2012, Abbas Kiarostami)

10. “Walk the Line” (2005, James Mangold)

11. “This Is 40” (2012, Judd Apatow)

12. “Monsieur Lazhar” (2011, Philippe Falardeau)

13. “Brokeback Mountain” (2005, Ang Lee)

14. “The Great Beauty” (2013, Paolo Sorrentino)

15. “The Trip to Italy” (2014, Michael Winterbottom)

16. “A Separation” (2011, Asghar Farhadi)

17. “Leviathan” (2014, Andrey Zvyagintsev)

18. “Paul à Québec” (2015, François Bouvier)

19. “The Best of Youth” (2003, Marco Tullio Giordana)

20. “The Secret in Their Eyes” (2009, Juan José Campanella)

21. “The Motorcycle Diaries” (2004, Walter Sailes)

22. “Blue is the Warmest Color” (2013, Abdellatif Kechiche)

23. “Sideways” (2004, Alexander Payne)

24. “I Am Love” (2009, Luca Guadagnino)

25. “Le Grand Voyage” (2004, Ismaël Ferroukhi)