Lost in Translation arouses controversy despite its success with the Oscar. People accuse Sofia Coppola of exaggerating the hysteria in Japanese character and lifestyle, and therefore of being biased towards the nation. The accusation seems funny to me. Coppola has been, as far as I’m concerned, shooting the movie from the perspective of a traveler, who, just like Bob and Charlotte, is making his/her first trip to Japan. As a traveler, everything in a new land strikes one fresh and sharp, consequently, one’s impressions tend to be more or less stereotyped and exaggerated (if put to later judgment)—by no means are they perfectly impartial. How could they possibly be? Coppola is clever in at least one thing: she doesn’t even try to analyze the myth of Japanese psycho (or the “puzzle of chrysanthemum and sword”, etc.), still less to solve it. Hers is more of a prosaic narrative style than a fictional one, the later inevitably involving a certain degree of argumentation on the part of the author. Coppola didn’t do that. She presents. We ponder. As we ramble about the country with the characters, we find the directress’ gesture both comfortable and suiting.
The distortion of female identity is, if not the most significant one, a quite interesting theme of the film. Charlotte represents various dilemmas of her sex. She’s highly educated, well married, charming, sociable and intelligent, but can’t figure out what to do with her life. Her marriage isn’t satisfactory. Apparently she and John love each other, yet John is no match of her in taste and insight. She’s critical. He’s congenial. She tends to categorize and rate people at a few glances of their manners and personalities. He, on the other hand, embraces them for what niceness that’s in them. In expressing affection he’s sincere yet awkward. He takes her as a little girl who must be reassured of her boyfriend’s love by words. Remember the hasty “I love you” he murmurs every time he leaves her? As a woman, she’s naturally content to hear that, but that content is transient. She’s unfulfilled, both as a wife and a woman. She challenges him by paying little attention to his incessant complaints about work and asking irrelevant questions like whether he thinks the scarf is done. He responds by similar indifference (“Oh, I…I don’t know ”). They are at the same time together and apart, and this is but the second year of their marriage.
Charlotte’s agitation about the future mainly comes from her fear for mediocrity. She has to maintain the sense of superiority to feel good about herself. When she says she hates what she writes, the implication is that her standard is high. Consciously or not, she holds the same kind of superiority describing her photography as “mean”. (Let’s remember that John, the bread-earner, is also a photographer.) Her dilemma is the dilemma of her sex. Man has his socially supposed gender character (to proceed, to excel, to climb the social ladder, etc.). To be equal to and as “complete” as man, woman has to abide by her gender character (to charm, to comfort, to take care of the household). But by being a “complete” woman, she becomes incomplete as an individual. The first scene of the movie, which focuses from the back on Charlotte’s stirring legs in the pinkish, tender daylight, best portrays the intangible restlessness of the female sex. Woman loses this or that part of her identity in a world of man. Tokyo is but one of the stages of that general loss.
Nevertheless, Tokyo as a stage is particular, and abounds with extremities with respect to the loss-of-female-identity theme. This is a place where working women (especially the highly paid white-collars) are split by the double standards exerted respectively by society and family. There’s the madwoman episode. I say “madwoman” just for convenience’s sake. The woman who forced herself upon Bob in the hotel room is but too typical. Before entering the room, her air is all business-like and official (“Short and sweet”, as Bob described the “Japanese style” on being received into the Park Hyatt), but after trying to seduce Bob in vain (Bob refused the “massage” she offered), she burst into hysteria all of a sudden. Maybe hysteria isn’t the right word. From her constant shouting of “Let me go!” and “Help please!” we see that she was kind of fancying being raped. She saw the widely worshipped, elegantly melancholy and perhaps exotic (Bob is a Westerner) movie star as a fit target of her sexual fantasy. (Remember the name of the massage she offered, the “Premium Fantasy”?) Very likely she’s a Masochist, fulfilling her desire, which would possibly have ruined her career and reputation if practiced with and known to her own people, by fancying being sabotaged by a mysterious stranger. It’s easy for us to imagine her working diligently and scrupulously, as well as playing impeccably the role of a tender and caring housewife in real life. Notice the alikeness between her smile and the professional smile of Bob’s interpreter—one thing that amazes me is how these Japanese women smile in a same way as if they have, in some annual assembly, fully discussed and reached an agreement upon the degree of the lips’ curve—the same over-courteousness, the same eagerness to please. By accepting the given role and faithfully carrying out the gender responsibilities that set limit to her personal caliber, woman for sure gains her share of satisfaction and sense of security, but in that process she’s been constantly denying herself. She can’t be satisfied in all aspects. She must and will give vent to her unfulfilled feelings, though not necessarily in the form of sexual perversity as we see in the madwoman episode.
(The bride that Charlotte saw in the shrine gives a most vivid and heart-felt image of woman accepting her gender role willingly and consciously. In traditional Japanese kimono, the bride seems all readiness to comply with the androcentric value system and to exert herself to have it maintained.)
There’re other lost women in the film. For example, Lydia, who has lost at least part of her identity in playing a model mother and housekeeper; Kelly, the supposedly “anorexic” action star, losing herself in a dream that would at best lead her to be a most exquisite and decorative ideal of her sex. Coppola’s touch of this sensitive theme is as subtle as it’s thought-provoking. Did Charlotte find her way out of the mass maze at the end of the movie? This I doubt, because the “loss” that’s been afflicting her is no accidental and personal one. It is a loss of the gender, of “the second sex”. I cannot but find the woman-being-enlightened ending tacky and unconvincing in a Hollywoodish style. Fortunately, that doesn’t shun the door to the various possible perspectives that we may adopt towards the movie (as well as its title). Possibility is everything. I guess that’s why Coppola’s detachment (which is not easy, and is likely to be spoiled by a single detail, such as Bob’s speaking instead of whispering to Charlotte in the street at the end of the movie) makes us so at ease.
Apr.2006
