LOST IN TRANSLATION REVIEW

Lost in Translation is a 2003 American film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. It stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. This film was a major critical success and it was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Bill Murray, and Best Director for Sofia Coppola; Coppola won for Best Original Screenplay. Scarlett Johansson won a BAFTA award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The film was also a commercial success, grossing almost $120 million from a budget of only $4 million.

Lost in Translation follows the developing of the relationship between Bob Harris (Bill Murray), a Hollywood actor who has come to Tokyo to film whiskey ads, and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson),  the wife of a photographer who has also travelled to Tokyo. They meet up by chance in a hotel of Tokyo and both of them share a boring and unsatisfying marriage. They experience attraction and love for each other but they don’t know what they really want.

The film deals with the themes of loneliness, alienation, insomnia, existential ennui, and culture shock against the backdrop of a modern Japanese city. But the main theme is loneliness:

Loneliness because despite the characters are surrounded by millions of people, both of them feel more alone than anywhere in the world; where the television has a clearly narrative function, and it only serves to accentuate the feeling of loneliness. Although in theory it is one of the few things that can attach them to what they left in their country.

This film has not a real plot structure, with a beginning, middle, and end. Moreover, it is full of silences; but there are silences that say a lot, sometimes more than one may think.

From my point of view, the film is sad and funny at the same time. It is a sample where everything has a place: the humour, the drama, tenderness, irony, the search for oneself, bewilderment, the personal failure.

I think that the film describes a beautiful love story, one of the most subtle and beautiful stories that I have seen in a while on a movie screen. It has three key moments:

The first one when both of them share the bed, lying face up, dressed, without touching, explaining his fears, his hand seeking her fingers until they happy felt asleep. The other one is when Bob loads in his arms Charlotte after a party night; he comes into the room, he puts her to bed, he removes her shoes, he pulls the covers up, he rubs her arm, he switches off the light and he closes the door for anyone disturb her happy sleep in that magical night that just passed. In that moment we can notice the man feels desire for the girl, but he also knows that it cannot be. Precisely because the film tells the story of something that cannot be that we can see in the third key moment, at the end of the film, when he walks over to her and whispers something to her, something that is intelligible. Something that can mean many things. 

21 GRAMS

 21 Grams is a 2003 American drama film directed by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga. It stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Danny Huston, and Benicio del Toro.

The film received nominations at the 2003 Academy Awards for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Benicio del Toro) and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Naomi Watts).

21 Grams follows three strangers who find their lives suddenly bound together by a tragic accident. Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) is a college professor in desperate need of a transplant. Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts) is a recovered addict who's turned her life around to become a loving wife and mother. Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro),  is an ex-con who rediscovers religion while struggling to rebuild a life for his wife and young children.

The structure of the film makes the audience work hard to understand what is happening, which is unusual for Hollywood films. This is achieved by the director’s choice of structuring the film non- chronologically.

The film deals with the themes of death and rebirth. The chaotic interaction of these two themes is vividly echoed by the film’s “patchwork” depictions of the unfolding events.

The film starts more or less with the end of the story which is not very usual. And from there on the audience has to put the pictures together to form the complete picture.

The themes of death and rebirth are most prominently seen in the characters of Paul, Katherine, Laura and Michael Peck. Paul’s death and rebirth is only possible by the tragic death of Cristina’s  family.

Jack makes unsuccessful attempts to kill himself but his rebirth is more abstract and it’s shown by his “rebirth” in Religion. He is always saying that he's duty is with God and that  the accident happened because of God's will.

The other rebirth is at the end of the film after the chaos when Cristina discovers she is pregnant.

The characterization by the actors was really good. All the actors managed to capture the pain, angony and personal struggles of the characters. For example, when Jack's wife is cleaning the blood on the car and sobbling at the same time.

Paul uses mathematics to try to express his understanding of the interrelations between death and rebirth. This is most noticeable when he talks of the boy losing 21 grams and wondering what a gain of 21 grams is. He does this in a somewhat algebraic sense. This leaves the viewer with the impression that the gain of 21 grams is his unborn child. This is underling that it cannot be birth without death, herein lies the cycle of life. Which is also illustrated in the poem at the end and in the title. 21 grams is the reported weight loss from the deceased that refers to a belief propagated by the early 20^th century by Dr. MacDougall which attempted to show scientific proof of the existence of the immortal human soul.

BUBBLE REVIEW

Bubble, directed by Steven Soderbergh, is a drama set in an American small town. This contemporary film shows the sad lives of two wowen and a man who work in a factory that manufactures dolls.The first character is Martha (Debbie Doebereiner), a middle-aged woman whose best friend is Kyle (Dustin James Ashley), a tall young man who is intensely shy and very quiet, although he opens up with Martha. And Rose (Misty Dawn Wilkins), an attractive single mother who joined the company after them.

The film reflects modern contemporary relationships in America. These contemporary relationships are played out within an arena of jealousy and feeling of betrayal which ultimately result in murder.

Martha initial jealousy is understandable. When Rose arrives she immediately attracts Kyle's attention, and Martha felt that her best friend Kyle, irrespective of the age difference, had found a person who made him feel special. Before Rose's arrival, Martha and Kyle spent so much time together and they had developed a close relationship. This jealousy becomes extremely obsessional which I can consider to be unrealistic.

The themes of jealousy and betrayal are magnified by Steven Soderbergh direction. This is achieved in a numbers of ways by the suffocating relationships of the characters. For example, Martha has only a friend, Kyle, because she has to spend most of her time working and taking care of her father.

At work she only talks to him, she doesn´t know anyone else, and as she says at the film she considers Kyle her best friend.

Another example is Kyle who had social anxiety disorder at high school and now that he has grown he continues having socialization problems. He's very shy so he only opens up with Martha.

Scenes are filmed in 4 or 5 locations. Adding to a feeling of intensity which echoes the characters emotions. Steven Soderbergh films many of the scenes creating an atmosphere of darkness which reflects the dark feelings of jealousy and betrayal.

Soundtrack complimented the film. The only music is during little scenes where we watch a character do something, and the music is as simple as some chords played on an acoustic guitar. The music is as simple as characters' lives.

Moreover, the actors are real people using real dialogue and less acting and more just going about their day. Their speech is such a monotone of commonplaces that we have to guess about how they really feel, and sometimes, we suspect, so do they.

The film is also extremely short at 73 minutes, which plays right into the style and simpleness of the film itself. Although, at the end I feel dissatisfied as there were a lot of loose ends that didn´t deal in many issues. But maybe this is the essence of that film: the interpretation and experimentation.You have to really like experimental, art films to like this one.

In conclusion, I may say that the title is perfect for the film because it mirrors characters' lives, they live in a bubble: Martha and Kyle don't know a lot of people and they don't go out too much. But when Rose arrives that bubble bursts.