Hi everyone. I'm doing 2 posts this week. You must be absolutely ecstatic over that news. The reason is I'm leaving for the great lake of Ontario with a stop in the finger lakes to see a band called Phish. This will be my 46th time seeing them. They're alright, I guess.
I'm not looking for a theme for these but one happened to pop up purely by coincidence: both of these films are 102 minutes long.
"Lost in Translation"(2003, USA-Japan, 102 minutes, Comedy Drama)
If I were making a "best of the decade" list like Mr. Ebert, this one would certainly be on it. "Lost in Translation" is the dreamy, melancholy masterpiece by director Sofia Coppola, who happens to be the daughter of Frances Ford Coppola.
It features a pitch-perfect performance from Bill Murray who was robbed of an Academy award for Best Actor here. Your guess why is as good as mine.
Scarlett Johansson (Charlotte), in one of her earlier roles, was 18 when it was shot, playing a 23 year old character.
This is a story about two lost souls in Tokyo, Japan. Both on a short stay: Murray's character (Bob Harris) is being paid millions of dollars to shoot a whiskey commercial in Japan while Johansson's is tagging along with her new husband of 2 years while he photographs a Japanese band. How hip.
The two have chance encounters as they are staying in the same hotel and develop a friendship. They spend nearly all their free time together due to Charlotte's husband traveling for his work around Japan. They obviously have great chemistry and they are obviously very lonely people.
The reasons couldn't be more different though: Bob has a difficult relationship with his wife and she seems very distant and passive aggressive during phone calls. Charlotte is worried she married the wrong man. She confides to her friend "I mean John is wearing all these hair products now and it's like, who did I marry?" Even though Charlotte is in tears confessing this, her friend on the other line in America is too busy to listen because she has her own life swirling around her in the background (mainly kids.)
So. the two go on wonderful adventures together and this is the part of the story where most movies would have them romantically kiss and likely have sex. This movie is far more adult than that. The intimacy the two spend talking on their hotel bed one of the last evenings together is a meeting and communicating of their minds that their body's couldn't come close to matching.
Every aspect of this film is near-perfect. The cinematography is amazing; I've never seen a film do with light what this one did. The sound designer nails mood perfectly. Bill Murray in particular gives a performance that I would put close to Joaquin Phoenix in "The Master"
I'd image you've already seen this one. But go get "Lost" again. This movie soothes the very core of one's being. Or, at least mine.
My Rating: 5/5 Stars
"Summer Hours" (2008, France, 102 Minutes, Drama)
In a literal, almost banal sense, Olivier Assayas’s “Summer Hours” is a movie about an inheritance.
Hélène Berthier (Edith Scob), a silver-haired matriarch enthroned among her children and grandchildren at the beginning of the film, leaves behind a charming country house and a cherished art collection, and her heirs, must figure out what to do with it all after her death. Hélène’s eldest son, Frédéric (Charles Berling), wants to keep everything as it is, so that the next generation can gather at the old place and appreciate Grandma’s stuff.
But Frédéric’s sister, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), and their younger brother, Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), who live abroad (she in the United States, he in China with his wife and three children), would rather sell the house and most of what is in it, donating the best of the paintings, pieces of furniture and sundry knickknacks to the Musée d’Orsay.
That, in a nutshell, is the dramatic arc of this extraordinary film, which, in spite of its modest scale, tactful manner and potentially dowdy subject matter, is packed with rich meaning and deep implication.
To quote the rotten tommatoes consensus (I'm a lazy man.) This movie "handles lofty ideas about art and culture with elegance and lightness."
The acting is superb. Between the way the camera moves and the way the lines are delivered you often feel you may be watching a documentary. I would use the term Docu-drama here but that term is already used for another genre. This is in fact all scripted even when the acting seems so natural.
In a scene near the end of the film, the children throw a party at the old house one last time before it is sold. This 5 minute, 50 actor scene is lively and unbelievably organic.
The film ends with a whimper and we are left in our seats pondering the loss of culture, places, memories, and people.
My Rating: 4.5/5 Stars
In most good libraries, and, of course, on the internet.
-See everyone a week from Monday, thanks again for reading.
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