There are many motives that a film can have. It could be to send a message, to show something purely for its aesthetic appeal, but most often it is made to get an emotional response from the viewer. Now whether this emotion is felt by its viewer or not lies squarely on the shoulders of its director. Writer and Director of “Lost in Translation” Sofia Coppola achieved this feat with flying colors. With a combination of music, lighting, and dialogue or lack thereof, you cannot help but be dragged into the odd love affair that this story is centered on.
When an old movie star and the wife of a photographer find themselves in Tokyo with no friends and boredom clawing at their sanity it is inevitable that they would meet. Once these characters find one another this story takes off. Starting off as a friendship based on a common case of insomnia between the two, it quickly grows into something neither of these characters have felt in a very long time, a relationship of love, curiosity, and most of all true happiness. There are a multitude of ways a director can chose to display these emotions and the growth of these characters. Such as lighting, dialogue, music, camera movement, and editing.
To say that she used these techniques well is not enough. In the beginning of the film you are dropped into the world of two very different but yet very similar people. Without much of a back story on these characters you are pretty much left to fend for yourself on finding out what these characters are made of. There are a few techniques used in this film that are the catalysts that allow you to achieve the emotional response desired by the director. With a combination of low contrast lighting and minimal dialogue you see their frustrations with their individual lives. You sense the emptiness and sadness that envelopes the characters, accompanied by the annoyance and disdain they have for the world surrounding them.
By leaving dialogue to a minimum you as a viewer are allowed a more in-depth look at the characters facial expressions that portray their true emotions throughout the film despite all of the hustle and bustle going on around them. I think dialogue plays the biggest hand in creating the connection between the viewer and the characters. Without this creative use of minimal dialogue you would not see the growth of these characters emotionally as their paths cross throughout the film. As the film goes on the dialogue picks up to the point where you feel both characters go from strangers on the street to a budding relationship in a matter of days, a feeling that would have been impossible to conjure up without first feeling the connection of loneliness, and restlessness shown in the beginning of the film.
Of course there are other techniques used to illicit an emotional response such as lighting as I mentioned before. Mrs. Coppola uses low contrast lighting throughout the film, from the bedroom scenes where you really get into the mind of the individual characters to the bar where the characters meet for the first time, to the club and other scenes throughout the city as the characters find not only the true Tokyo but also themselves. By doing this she creates a level of connection between the characters and their emotions from before they meet, until they must part ways. On another note this also gives the film a feeling of realness, of casualness only found in the most sincere of relationships as they mill through Tokyo life together and form a relationship that in the end that will leave both characters different than you would have ever imagined in the beginning.
Another huge technique used in the film was the moving camera. With few cuts and a lot of movement you get a feeling of continuity as if you were a bystander watching this beautiful confluence of events occur. But it also does something that I think a lot of the time is a difficult thing to do with film and that is to create tension without the aid of climactic music or fast action cuts. You can feel the sexual tension and love between the characters with every moving shot, with every lingering stare, and with every movement usually lost being caught by the camera and in turn the viewer. By moving the camera you are taken on a ride of, what action will set it off? What am I going to see that makes them finally show the true emotions that they have been hiding from each other since they met?
With the combination of these techniques and a story that can’t help but illicit a strong and connected emotional response, Coppola has done what I think all filmmakers wish to achieve and that is the intended response of the viewer. Her techniques take you on a journey through the lives of these two people, and how a freak meeting between two people from completely different places and sets of experiences can really change their lives forever.
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