Lost in Translation is a 2003 romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Bill Murray stars as Bob Harris, a fading American movie star who is having a midlife crisis when he travels to Tokyo to promote Suntory whisky. He befriends another disillusioned American, Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a recent college graduate and married for two years. The film explores themes of alienation and disconnection against a backdrop of cultural displacement in Japan. It does not use mainstream narrative conventions and is atypical in its depiction of romance.
Principal photography began on September 29, 2002, and lasted 27 days. With a tight schedule and a limited $4 million budget, filming was done six days per week, without permits, marked by a “run-and-gun” approach: Coppola was keen to stay mobile with a small crew and minimal equipment. She conducted few rehearsals and kept a flexible schedule, sometimes scrapping filming plans to shoot something she noticed on location if she thought it better served the story. Since the screenplay was sparse, missing details were often addressed during shooting, and Coppola allowed a significant amount of improvisation in dialogue, especially from Murray.
While key crew members were Americans that Coppola invited to Tokyo, most of the crew was hired locally. This proved to be challenging for the production, as most of the Japanese crew could not communicate with Coppola in English, so both sides relied on translations by a bilingual assistant director and a gaffer. The production encountered frequent delays while translations took place and suffered from occasional cultural misunderstandings. Despite this, Coppola said she worked to adapt to a Japanese style of filmmaking, not wanting to impose an approach that her crew was not used to.
Coppola worked closely to visualize the film with her director of photography, Lance Acord. She showed him and other key crew members a book of photographs she created that represented the visual style she wanted to convey in the film. To evoke a sense of isolation in Bob, Coppola and Acord used stationary shots in the hotel and avoided conspicuous camera movements. They also had numerous discussions about shooting on video, but they ultimately decided that film better suited the romantic undertones of the story. Coppola remarked, “Film gives a little bit of a distance, which feels more like a memory to me. Video is more present tense.” Acord believed that new film stocks would reduce the need for excessive lighting, ultimately using Kodak Vision 500T 5263 35 mm stock for night exteriors and Kodak Vision 320T 5277 stock in daylight. Most of the film was shot with an Aaton 35-III camera. For some confined locations where the Aaton would have been too noisy, a Moviecam Compact was used.
Many of the shooting locations were local places of business and public areas at the time of filming, including rooms, bar and swimming pool in the Park Hyatt Tokyo and Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo. Filming also took place at Jōgan-ji (Nakano, Tokyo). The opening scene was done at Yasukuni-dōri in Kabuki-chō. Charlotte’s ride at the subway was taken at Omote-sando Station at the Hanzōmon and Ginza lines platform. The chase scene after the bar and through the Pachinko parlor “Botan” were around Naka-Meguro Station. Brief scenes were also filmed in Kyoto at the Heian Shrine, and Nanzen-ji. The hospital scene was at the Tokyo Medical University. The last scene was done at Chūō-dōri in Nishi-Shinjuku close to Shinjuku train station.
On public streets and subways, the production did not secure filming permits and relied on city bystanders as extras. Coppola described the shooting as “documentary-style” and was worried at times about getting stopped by police, so she kept a minimal crew. In the hotel, the production was not allowed to shoot in public areas until 1 or 2 a.m. to avoid disturbing guests. In the film’s concluding sequence in which Bob and Charlotte make their final goodbyes, Coppola reported being unhappy with the dialogue she had scripted, so Murray improvised the whisper in Johansson’s ear. Too quiet to be understandable, Coppola considered dubbing audio in the scene, but she ultimately decided it was better that it “stays between the two of them.” After production concluded, Coppola supervised 10 weeks of editing by Sarah Flack in New York City.
Lost in Translation premiered on August 29, 2003, at the Telluride Film Festival, and was distributed to American theatres on September 12, 2003. It grossed $118 million worldwide and received acclaim for its writing, directing and performances, though its depiction of Japan and Japanese people was criticized. At the 76th Academy Awards, Lost in Translation won Coppola Best Original Screenplay, and the film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Murray). Other accolades won include three BAFTAs and three Golden Globes. It has since been named one of the greatest films of the 2000s and 21st century.
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