Films to Watch Before You Die #11: Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola

Existential despair follows two foreigners to the obscure land of Tokyo, Japan. Despite their completely different lifestyles, they befriend each other and find solace in each other's company in a place that is so far from their own reality.

Lost in Translation is a beautiful film with its metaphor of being lost in life, Tokyo can be seen as this world in which life goes on; people go about their daily lives; however, our two main characters observe from the outside. They feel they do not fit in, and that happiness is merely a facade to distract us from the inevitability of depression and death.

Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a washed-up retired actor who longs for the peak of his career to return, but has resorted to using his former fame for shilling products for commercials in his old age. He's tired, he's alone, and he's afraid his marriage is failing due to his depressive ways and lack of support as a father. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is the partner of a successful photographer, and has decided to tag along to Japan for his work, but even then, she's mostly alone.

Without getting into their shenanigans too much, the two grow close as they realise they are quite literally both lost in translation, they discuss the cruelties of life and are comforted by the fact that they share the same negative outlook on life and their futures.

The film's cinematography shows the almost otherworldly neon-filled city of Tokyo in the early 2000s, in a time where the city was blooming with technological innovations and post-millennium depression due to its harsh work ethics. It shows that despite how you feel and where you are in life, time continues. It cannot go back, it cannot be stopped, it will always go forward.