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Lost in Translation: A letter to Sofia Coppola
By ella | April 22, 2005
Dear Miss Coppola
I finally saw your film ‘Lost in Translation’ last night. It took me over a year to get around to it, but I have to say it was entirely worth the wait.
I feared that it would not live up to the hype, but as I knew nothing of its premise I could not form an idea in my own mind, before seeing it, of how good or otherwise your film might be. I tend to do that, although I wish I didn’t.
Anyway, your film was wonderful. Humorous and touching, your film is not in any way a love story, it is something both more and less than that. It contains that element of yearning that any good love story needs, but instead the yearning is for connectedness in a world where we are so connectable but which can leave us feeling so disconnected.
Dislocated people: they’re an unknown quantity, aren’t they? Especially when they can’t sleep. I can especially relate to that part, even though I am not dislocated and disorientated in quite the same way as your main characters, Bob and Charlotte. I have two main characters called Harry and William who have dislocated and disorientated me from my own life but in an entirely different way. However that’s another story and I can tell you now that it wouldn’t make for nearly such an interesting film.
Anyway, you can be sure that if I had to spend a week in an hotel, I wouldn’t waste it by staying awake. Not for a minute.
However I could still appreciate the isolation and sense of dislocation felt by your two protagonists. To have a partnership with someone who doesn’t really listen to you, who doesn’t listen to who you are or to what you need is miserable at best, devastating at worst. To be caught in limbo in a place where all the cultural markers are different as well simply adds to the sense of displacement.
I’ve been trying to think why I feel so affected by your film. ‘Lost in Translation’ is beautiful, poignant and humorous but, more than that, I think it might be simply that there are so few films that I feel I really want to sit through anymore. Time feels so precious to me these days and I have learnt to fill it only with things that enrich my life. Your film has done that even though I can’t say quite how.
Yours
Ella M
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