The tagline for the film ‘Lost in Translation’ (Sophia Coppola, 2003) is naturally illustrative of the thematic content of the film: ‘everyone wants to be found’. It is indicative of the emotional and cultural displacement felt by the key protagonists, Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansen), sensations reflected in the clip beginning chapter 17 ‘Kyoto’ (1:10:24 – 1:18:24). The excerpt emphasises the feelings of loneliness and disjointedness felt by the pair not only as individuals, but as foreigners in Japan. It does this through encouraging parallels between the two halves of the clip, and with the rest of the film itself – a device repeatedly employed in the film’s rhetoric. Similarly, the clip recalls motifs such as phone conversations and features of mis en scène to develop the narrative. It is the differences between eastern and western culture as seen through their eyes which primarily develop a sense of their loneliness.
The clip opens with a long shot of Mt Fuji, the one constant in a quick moving tracking shot of the landscape beyond the train window. The cool blues of the landscape are reflective of the generally low key lighting employed during the film, though in this case, the lighting is off screen: it is meant to be the weak sunlight of the winter season. The scene cuts to an image of Charlotte, framed between the strong vertical of the seat back and the window: her reflection in the glass reminds us that even though we can see beyond the glass and the shot is opened out to us, she is still contained within the left-hand side of the shot. She is restricted. The cuts between the POV shots of the landscape and views of Charlotte in the carriage illustrate Coppola’s prevalent editing style, a sense developed when Charlotte gets off the shinkhansen (bullet train). We suddenly switch to a more observational shot of Charlotte walking out of the right-hand side of the shot with the emphasis left on the shinkhansen – on Japan’s modernity....