Let us put aside love and talk about the two protagonists.
Charlotte,
a young woman who has been married for two years, came here with her husband because of her husband’s work in Tokyo, but her husband was too busy at work and left her out. She didn’t even have time to sit down and talk together, let alone know her because she was in a foreign country. The resulting inner loneliness. She can only solve it by smoking, drinking bars, listening to CDs, and traveling alone.
Bob Harris,
a middle-aged man who has been married for more than 20 years and has children with his wife, is inevitably facing a midlife crisis. Moreover, in his career, as an old movie star, he was on the verge of passing. This time I came to Tokyo to shoot a whiskey commercial. The Japanese receptionist was very kind to him and even arranged a "special service" for him, but everything in Tokyo was still incompatible with him.
They have fallen into a foreign land, but this foreign land is not Britain or Australia, but Tokyo, Japan. There is no language they are familiar with, no faces they are familiar with, and even the way people do things makes them feel unfamiliar. Since the two are "the same people who have fallen into the world", then "why have we met before each other". They began to communicate in the hotel bar, and their eyes conveyed friendly affection, and then they started to chat.
Slowly, the two hearts began to approach, and a subtle affection developed. However, under realistic conditions, two people cannot have results. After a brief meeting of hearts, they return to their respective lives, and this experience in Tokyo may just become a beautiful memory that affects their lives.
If you have noticed the poster of "Lost in Tokyo", you will find a line on the top of the poster, "Everyone wants to be found." This is the theme of the whole movie. As Charlotte, she hopes that her photographer husband will care about her a little more and save her from the "stay behind life" in Tokyo every day. Her husband may never know how helpless his wife feels when she sits by the window at night and looks at the gorgeous neon views of Tokyo’s night scene, but during the day Charlotte calls her friends in the United States and wipes her tears. Kind of loneliness. That kind of feeling I think only those who have experienced loneliness can truly appreciate it-that kind of feeling that is irrelevant to you even if the world is hot and bustling, you are just a stranger to the world. As Bob, he has faced a mid-life crisis in life and a bottleneck in his career. More than 30 similar floor colors were placed in front of him. His wife forced him to make a choice. This is undoubtedly a sadness in family life. After the emotional enthusiasm slowly recedes, it inevitably enters the stage of daily firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar tea. There must be no other topics in the communication between him and his wife except housework. But as the pillar of the family, Bob also needs to be understood and cared for.
If the ending of the film is that the hero and the heroine elope without hesitation in pursuit of love, then I think this film may become a super bad film. The point of this movie is not to tell us how beautiful love is and how to meet the right person in a crowd. At the end of the film, the protagonist and heroine did not choose the love that was lost in a blink of an eye, but chose the long responsibility after love. Perhaps more braver than the pursuit of love is to accept the true face of life. This ending is even more embarrassing and shocking.
Director Sofia Coppola is good at portraying the delicate psychology of the characters. This time she focused on the "difficult communication" between people in contemporary society with her unique female perspective. Her lens is good at directly and nakedly intervening in the lives of the characters in the film, but she consciously keeps a certain distance between the characters in the film, creating a sense of separation and onlookers. This method is most suitable for dealing with films with the theme "Lost in Tokyo". In the film, the director deliberately emphasized the feasting, neon city, and constant flow of Tokyo. At the same time, it made a sharp contrast with the slow life of the male and female protagonists and highlighted the incompatibility between the male and female protagonists and Tokyo. The color of the film is cold. At the end of the film, the lead cloud on the way Bob takes the car to the airport gives people a sense of depression when parting, but the sky is still high and life must continue, just like a car driving on a highway. Drive through the overpass, drive through the underground passage, anyway, it still has to go on.
In the film, the director Sofia Coppola tried his best to create a sense of Japanese strangeness. At the beginning of the film, Bob sat in the car and looked at the feasting streets of Tokyo, but he still couldn't get enough energy, because all his signs were in Japanese. , The only thing that attracted his attention was the McDonald’s sign in the distance, the big yellow "M", only this could make him notice a trace of his own country. Of course, the film was made for Americans, so in order to greatly highlight the strangeness of Japan, she even demonized Japan a bit. For example, in the elevator of a hotel, the tall Bob stands out among a group of Japanese men. The common feature of those Japanese men is their short stature, especially when standing with Bob; for example, he said a few words at the commercial shooting scene. The Japanese advertising director who began to babble, roar and jump; another example is the variety show that Bob went to record, and the host of that show was extremely exaggerated in his actions, and even seemed to us like a clown; even for example, that wanted to provide Bob with The exaggerated demeanor and poor English pronunciation of the "special service" candidates. These all successfully "alienated" Japan in the film. But this is harmless, the Americans don't care, and the Japanese don't care. It turns out that in the eyes of Americans, the so-called East outside of the West is so "weird", even Japan, the most developed and internationalized country in Asia.
In addition, I have to mention the original soundtrack of this movie. Some people say that if you have not heard the original soundtrack of this movie, it would only be equivalent to watching one-half of the movie. Whether it is Just Like Honey from The Jesus and Mary Chain or Girls from Death in Vegas, they all add a lot to the film.
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