It’s high time to watch a movie over when its plot has faded enough from memory that you can watch it for the first time, for a second time. What always strikes me is not that I notice more about the movie, since usually I noticed plenty the first few viewings, but that I myself react differently.
The best movies will grow with you. Fight Club, despite Edward Norton, lost its spark for me and for a lot of my friends whose values matured a little. Any movie with Bill Murray will survive that, of course, but Lost in Translation has a few added wrinkles. Feel free to add your own or modify the current:
- Charlotte is Holden Cauffield gone to Yale
This, actually, is not a bad thing. Catcher in the Rye works because Holden is such a hypocrite, and he learns it. Charlotte sneers at Kelly (the superficial blonde actress) for her power cleanses and unjustified happiness, but Charlotte listens to self-help tapes and carries the mark of doom itself: she was a philosophy student. Charlotte laughs at Kelly for singing hotel karaoke but had just rented a sky-high karaoke booth a few nights ago.
While Charlotte is a sympathetic protagonist, I finally noticed movie isn’t always kind to her, and therefore not to me, since I identify with her. She says her most revealing line while she’s cutting Bob’s shirt: “You’re too tall.” Since nothing’s ever her fault. She’s an overgrown teenager who can’t treat the only adult in the movie with respect.
- Bill Murray plays an adult, for once
His home life isn’t great, but that’s not the mark of an adult. Bob can laugh at himself. None of Charlotte’s angst phases him — he forgives her insults and even laughs along, never striking back. Bob is much more honest to Charlotte than she was to him during the foot scene, even though she began the conversation. Bob only needs one golf club.
But he doesn’t win the Zen award. The most fulfilled character in the movie is the guy playing the guitar video game in the games parlor. He’s not too cool to play video games in public. He totally deserves that girlfriend, and he owns me.
- I want to start smoking now
I think the anti-smoking robots worry about the wrong people. Smoking never used to attract me as a kid — I had yet to connect it to sweet, sweet dissatisfaction with the world around me. Oh man, any scene where Charlotte rolls her eyes and takes a drag: exquisite disdain through self-destruction. If only cigarettes didn’t make me sick.
In related news, I got a crush again on Scarlet Johanssen after the wig scene.
- Lost in Translation knocks Keanu Reeves
Keanu Reeves jokes get triple joke score.
- One problem though
It makes no sense that Charlotte married the guy she did. Bob’s relationship merited an explanation: they used to have fun, but the spark’s gone. The antagonism is mutual and explains itself. But Charlotte’s husband doesn’t seem to be aware of who she is.
More to come, maybe.