thevoid99's Classic Films # 2 Pt. 1: Lost in Translation
Jul 26 '04 (Updated Jul 30 '04)
The Bottom Line A Look into Sofia Coppola's 2003 Classic Film and Her Drive as An Artist.
thevoid99’s Classics Films # 2: Lost in Translation
Charlotte: So, what are you doing here?
Bob Harris: Uh, a couple of things. Taking a break from my wife, forgetting my son's birthday. And, uh, getting paid two million dollars to endorse a whiskey when I could be doing a play somewhere.
Charlotte: Oh.
Bob Harris: But the good news is, the whiskey works.
Introduction
2003 was definitely one amazing year in cinema. For Hollywood though, it was pretty much an unspectacular year as they tried to churn out as much as possible. Amidst the highly-anticipated sequels to “The Matrix”, three bimbos in bikinis, a huge green monster, explosions, fast cars, and race horses, movies pretty much had lost their way and this was just the summer. Sure, there were a few exceptions in between but in the end, I only saw one movie in the summer and it wasn’t even from Hollywood but from Sundance, “American Splendor”. Even before the summer and what was coming after, it pretty much seemed for me that I would be seeing less and less films that would be any good with only one film I was waiting for, “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”. Even though there was more access for me to see independent films, I was cautious in taking a risk.
I had interests in indie or personal films early on in high school but I felt that some of them were too pretentious. Between 1997 and 2002, I recall I think in only seeing one, "24 Hour Party People” mainly because it was a film about Factory Records and bands like Joy Division and the Happy Mondays. I enjoyed the film because it was different from what usually came around, plus I had to drive a bit closer to Atlanta to see the film since there weren’t a lot of theaters in Smyrna, that carried art-house films. Even as I had Sundance Channel, Starz, Encore, IFC, and other movie channels on my satellite that would show those weird films, I still felt wary of what would they bring to the table. Even as I read reviews on Epinions.com, I had a bit of an interest on many of those films but I wondered if I ever had the time to watch them. Then, I finally took a risk in watching “Secretary”, that not only opened me up more as a person but to a whole new world.
There was a movie that I could completely relate to emotionally and the result not only made me write an essay on that film, but also opened me up to a whole new world of personal art. It wasn’t just filmmakers I was interested in but actors as well. Finally, there were actors and actresses who were playing characters that I can parallel myself to but also be amazed in their performances. Plus, there were playing people in my age group. Finally, I felt that I no longer have to watch movies about older people playing people my age. Plus, I had hopes that as time go by, they would still be here evolving into movies where they play older and more interesting characters. For me, I felt I was watching some new movement coming with not just these young actors but from a new group of filmmakers.
The renewed interest in indie films made me go see “American Splendor” where after watching the film, I found myself in a place that I didn’t think would happen but after watching that movie. I noticed that the audience and myself were clapping over this movie because we all enjoyed it. That was something I never saw in my life. People coming to see a good movie and clapping afterwards. I don’t remember having an experience like that. Was it an art house thing or people just happy to see a great movie about real people? On that same hot August night of the 31st, I saw the trailer for another film that really grabbed me. Again, it was something completely different and less than a month later; I would see that movie, not once. Not twice but three times in less than 4 months. That film was Sofia Coppola’s dreamy, landmark masterpiece “Lost in Translation”.
Everyone Wants to Be Found Part 1: The Making of a New Visionary.
If a film like “Secretary” allowed a young, fragile woman like Lee Holloway to explore new worlds through sadomasochism, “Lost in Translation” is about that exploration of new worlds but from the viewpoints of an outsider that isn’t sure on how to feel. It’s been almost over half a year since the film’s release and while most of the reaction has been positive. Some though haven’t been and quite understandable. Many complaints about the film were that it lacked the notion of a plot. I think that was something a bit misunderstood. What the film is about is very simple. Two people, driven by isolation trying to connect in a world that is really foreign to them and as their relationship develops, so does their understanding of the world around them. The film has a very universal theme and it’s probably because it came from the one person who understands the feelings of disconnection through the world. That person was the film’s writer and director, Sofia Coppola.
Born in May 12, 1971, Sofia Coppola came from a family whose surname would be famous upon the world of cinema for the next thirty years. She was the daughter of legendary Italian-American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, whose credits includes such masterpieces as “The Godfather 1 & 2", “The Conversation”, and “Apocalypse Now”. Four films from 1972-1979 that Francis made would make a legend as he continued on with some success with films like “Peggy Sue Got Married”, “The Outsiders”, “Rumble Fish”, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, and notorious failures like 1990’s “The Godfather Part 3", “The Cotton Club” and his 1982 musical “One from the Heart”, that some have now said was misunderstood since its release.
The Coppola legacy didn’t end as her grandfather Carmine was a film composer who wrote the film scores for “The Godfather 1 & 2" that won him an Academy Award for the second one while his son won his first for his contribution to the adapted screenplay of “Patton” in 1971 and would win more for “The Godfather” in 1972 and its sequel in 1974. Her aunt Talia Shire was an acclaimed actress who not only appeared in “The Godfather” films but also “Rocky” and its sequels. Shire’s sons, Jason Schwartzman, won acclaim for his performances in films like “Rushmore” and “Spun” while forming the California indie-pop band Phantom Planet, and little brother Robert appeared in the 2001 hit film” The Princess Diaries” and formed his own group, Rooney. Even Sofia’s cousin Nicholas Cage had some degree of success before winning an Oscar for Best Actor in 1995 for his performance in “Leaving Las Vegas” while her brother Roman became an acclaimed music video director before scoring acclaim for his first feature-length film, “CQ” in 2001.
For Sofia, her life began in the cinema as she had first taste appearing as the baby baptized in a scene for “The Godfather”. She would often appear in her father’s movies or being on the set as she remembered fondly of her experience when her father made the 1979 anti-war film “Apocalypse Now”. She said that she had fun at that whole time while her father recalled a different experience since the making of the film led him to emotional breakdowns. When the 80s rolled around, Sofia would appear in a few of her father’s movies like “Rumble Fish” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” while making a small appearance in the 1987 film “Anna”. In 1989 when her father, Martin Scorsese, and Woody Allen decided to do the omnibus film “New York Stories” where each director did a vignette relating to the city. For Sofia, it would be her first experience, outside of acting, where she would be involved in a film. For Francis Ford Coppola’s vignette, “Life Without Zoe”, a story about a rich little girl trying to reunite her parents. Francis and Sofia wrote the story as she also did the costume and title design.
Though it was only her first attempt at writing, the “Life Without Zoe” was considered the weakest of the three, especially since it was sandwiched between the stronger shorts from Scorsese and Allen. Some people found the plot to be too strange for kids and parents but it deter Sofia from being in films. Of course her next involvement with film would not just gain her some recognition, it would garner a taste of the bad press of what her father endured in the past decade. At the last minute due to illness, actress Winona Ryder stepped out of a huge spot in Coppola’s long-awaited film for “The Godfather Part 3". Immediately, Sofia was cast as Mary Corleone despite her inexperience as an actress. Despite some good reviews, the film didn’t meet the expectations of its predecessors while Sofia received the worst reviews for her performance that was often touted as wooden. In a recent 2004 interview with David Letterman, Sofia admits she never wanted to be an actress and couldn’t bear to watch her own performance in that film.
After nabbing a couple of Razzie Awards for that performance, Sofia Coppola would retreat from Hollywood in the early 90s as she became a part of the new art scene that included her brother Roman and his friend and video director Spike Jonze. Around that same time where she began a relationship with Jonze, she came across a novel by acclaimed writer Jeffery Eugenides about a group of sisters in the 1970s trying to connect with boys in their strict household entitled “The Virgin Suicides”. For the next few years, Sofia would craft her work as a writer while helping out Roman and Spike in their respective music videos, including act in Spike’s directed clip for the Chemical Brothers’ “Elektrobank” video. Finally in late 1997 with friend Stephanie Hayman, she worked on her first short film with help from cinematographer Lance Acord for her first film work as a director entitled “Lick the Stars”.
For those who have seen “Lost in Translation” and “The Virgin Suicides” should know where its roots come from, film wise and it begins with “Lick the Stars”. A little short film about middle school life as a popular girl outcasts her friend that leads to more manipulation and a big twist. Filmed in black-and-white photography, “Lick the Stars” showed Coppola’s ability as a filmmaker as she doesn’t sensationalize life in middle school or downgrade it. Instead, just shows the world of school cliques and its degradation of outsiders. The film also had edge with punk-driven music by the Go-Gos and the Amps as Coppola’s first short film proved to be different than anything she did her father had done.
Though it would take several short films or a few for filmmakers to grow, with the experience Sofia had from her days watching her dad work on the set, she knew she was ready to work on her first feature-length film. She took the novel of “The Virgin Suicides”, adapted into a screenplay and immediately; she was ready to go to work on what would become one of the finest debut efforts from any filmmaker. Around that same time, her new husband Spike Jonze was also making his first film for “Being John Malkovich” with help from their friend Lance Acord and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Sofia would get help not from her father Francis, who served as an executive producer, but also Francis Ford Coppola’s longtime sound designer Richard Beggs.
With Sofia choosing cinematographer Edward Lachman and her friend Brian Reitzell as music supervisor, she chose her cast that wouldn’t just include veterans like James Woods, Michael Pare`, Danny DeVito, and two actors from her father’s films, Kathleen Turner and Scott Glenn. She also chose a group of young actors that would include Chelse Swain, Jonathan Tucker, Josh Hartnett, Hayden Christensen, and Kirsten Dunst who made her film debut nearly 10 years ago appearing in the Woody Allen-directed segment of “Oedipus Wrecks” in “New York Stories”.
The resulting film would premiere at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival where it drew rave reviews for its dreamy, evocative tone. While her father was a master of subtlety, Sofia proved herself to be just as good as her father by mixing a dash of teenage adolescent in the mid-1970s with a dose of eeriness that set the mood for a tone that was darker than most teen films. What “The Virgin Suicides” brought was something new that would be coming not just from Sofia Coppola but also up-and-coming filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson and Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron.
“The Virgin Suicides” in many cases was a dream film not just for its subtle tone and haunting textures but also an eerie, colorful look that was captured by Edward Lachman’s exquisite cinematography. Enhancing that eerie mood was a film score by the French electronic duo known as Air that brought a dreamy yet chilling tone that gave the smell of death right through the mind of its audiences. When it was released to a wide audience in 2000, the film drew not just amazing reviews but also some box office success as Sofia’s appearance in “The Godfather Part 3" became nothing but a distant memory. The film made Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett stars while Sofia won a Best New Filmmaker at the MTV Movie Awards presented to her by one of her father’s old friends, George Lucas. Her husband Spike meanwhile, was also enjoying success with his first film as it became a huge hit commercially and critically where at the time, it seems that the new filmmaking couple was having a happy marriage. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be.
While having a success with a debut is great, following up a great debut is even harder as Sofia and Spike both were trying to figure out what to do next. Spike eventually chose to do more videos before reuniting with Kaufman and Acord for “Adaptation” starring Sofia’s cousin Nicholas Cage. Sofia meanwhile, developed a short-lived TV project called “Platinum” and appears in her brother Roman’s 2001 feature-film debut “CQ”. After years of figuring out her next project, she went back to her own experiences of isolation not just from her own experience but of the people she knew. She thought about her own experiences of being in Tokyo, Japan and the city that is pretty much a completely different world from America. There, she chose her next project.
Before we go to that eventual project which would be “Lost in Translation”, we have to look back at the previous efforts that Sofia did. With “Lick the Stars” and “The Virgin Suicides” both films revolved the world of adolescents and the isolation that surrounds them. “Lick the Stars” was a little glimpse into the world of cliques. “The Virgin Suicides” recalled the days of 1970s suburbia of teenage girls trying to connect with young boys that would eventually due to their parents strict household, lead to doom as the boys themselves wonder what happened. Another aspect of “The Virgin Suicides” that is overlooked in relation to “Lost in Translation” is an adult tone where the parents of the Lisbon girls, played by James Woods & Kathleen Turner, often isolate themselves from other adults in order to watch their kids and in the end, they have no one left to talk to. “Lost in Translation” though is a much more adult film than its predecessors because the film is an exercise of character and geographical study from the viewpoint of an outsider.
Back in 2000 when I first saw “The Virgin Suicides”, I thought of it as a nice little film of adolescents with dark elements. When I was older, I began to understand more of what Sofia was trying to accomplish and its relation to what would become, “Lost in Translation”. “The Virgin Suicides” has this sense of lost innocence that I think not just younger but older adults were missing. The film’s ending showed a sense of cynicism through adults on their viewpoints on what its like to be kids while the four boys who were pining over the Lisbon girls felt that their days of innocence were officially over. Even as its narrator, played by Giovanni Ribisi, was feeling over his lost innocence of childhood as the audience could tell, he is still in mourning over that and the Lisbon girls.
Even as I anticipated the release of “Lost in Translation”, I had to come back and watch “The Virgin Suicides” for some of the cinematic elements and realized that Sofia Coppola was a much different visionary than her father was. Then on September 21st, 2003, I went to see “Lost in Translation” in the first of three viewings in the remainder of that year. There for probably the first time in my life as a person who loved art, I felt was watching something historical and something brand new. It made me wonder what it felt like when people first saw landmark films like “The Godfather”, “Easy Rider”, “A Clockwork Orange”, “A Bout de Souffle”, “L’Avventura”, “La Dolce Vita”, “Patton”, “Citizen Kane”, “Platoon”, “Casablanca”, or “Pulp Fiction” back when they came out. With “Lost in Translation”, I felt probably and truly for the first time, I had my own movie for my own generation to watch that I felt could rank up with those films. There I realized, after watching many movies in the theaters, I was watching the beginning of a new age of modern cinema.
End of Part 1.
© thevoid99/Ikebana/Okrad/Charlotte Holloway Publishings, 2004.
Related Reviews:
Secretary Essay:
Part 1:
http://www.epinions.com/content_3458572420
Part 2:
http://www.epinions.com/content_3458965636
LIT Essay:
Part 2:
http://www.epinions.com/content_4023951492
Part 3:
http://www.epinions.com/content_4025852036
Part 4:
http://www.epinions.com/content_4028735620
Part 5:
http://www.epinions.com/content_4030439556
The Virgin Suicides (2000):
http://www.epinions.com/content_113280716420
Lost in Translation (2003):
http://www.epinions.com/content_113414475396
Lost in Translation Soundtrack (2003):
http://www.epinions.com/content_113940795012
City Girl Essay:
http://www.epinions.com/content_3871711364
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