After a rocky start to her directing career with Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola finds her groove in her second feature film Lost in Translation. Written and directed by Coppola, the film sets off to explore the unusual relationship between two jet-lagged strangers searching for clarity in their lives. The simple bond that ensues entices the audience with its relatable and genuine emotions. Too often, Hollywood seems to tell the audience what to feel, instead of using film properly: to show emotions.
Both the young and the old are captured by this candid and unexpected story of a friendship. Bob Harris (Bill Murray), a washed out, middle-aged actor doing a $2 million commercial in Tokyo, develops a strong friendship with Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) who has accompanied her new husband on another one of his posh photo shoots. Both characters find themselves in a period of uncertainty. Bob, feeling more and more estranged from his wife, relates to the woes of Charlotte as she struggles to find her own path in life, at times questioning her marriage. Their relationship sparks from a mutual time-zone induced insomnia that has them bumping into each other at the hotel bar at all hours of the night. Regardless of the age difference, this relationship feels much more real to each of them, than the superficial world of whiskey commercials and celebrities into which they have fallen. When Charlotte’s husband leaves her for the weekend to go on a photo shoot in southern Japan, their relationship takes off. Together they venture out into Tokyo, all the while drawing closer to each other. The pivotal scene comes when Charlotte seeks advice about her relationship from Bob, showing the intimacy that has developed between them. While always ...
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...ost abrupt of cuts and edits to feel smooth and natural. Coppola’s fondness for music is evident from her extensive use of on-screen musical elements such as the jazz bar, the karaoke, and Charlotte’s musician friends. Even as they tramp through the city, the rush of cars and the shouts of people become a kind of music. Every sound in this film plays an integral part in the overall tone.
The key to Lost in Translation lies in its simplicity. It is a film about real people with real problems and real emotions. With Sofia Coppola’s excellent eye for cinematography and her perfect balance between drama and comedy, it is no wonder that this film received four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Director. For a good laugh about the real world, watch Lost in Translation, and maybe you won’t feel so lost afterwards.
Anna and Ben realize that this short-term solution of starting a band only masks their issues and does not heal them. The conversations the two have on the more dramatic end of the spectrum are performed wonderfully. Trivial events in their lives are brought up, both pressing the narrative and emotional arc of this couple we’ve fallen in love with. The scenes are almost too real, which is one of the best compliments I can give to the actors involved.
November 1998, written for FILM 220: Aspects of Criticism. This is a 24-week course for second-year students, examining methods of critical analysis, interpretation and evaluation. The final assignment was simply to write a 1000-word critical essay on a film seen in class during the final six-weeks of the course. Students were expected to draw on concepts they had studied over the length of the course.
[2] Missing is a rather confusing film to follow at first. Admittedly, I had to view it a few times to understand what was happening. Perhaps the initial feeling after seeing this film is confusion. However, after having watched it a second, fourth, eighth time, what I really felt was anger. Each time I watched the film, the anger and disgust would grow, so much so that it pained me to watch it again. However, in identifying the cause of my anger, I began to realize many things.
Braff himself has a warm, easy-to-watch screen presence. He can say nothing during the lull in a conversation, while the camera remains focused on his face, and it feels right. Portman and Sarsgaard are also genuine, each wonderfully relaxed in their roles. Production design is superb: details in every scene are arranged well, and the photography, by Lawrence Sher, is - like the story and the acting – unpretentious, never distracting, tricky or cute. This film never seems to manipulate us; instead it engages us, arouses our curiosity and amusement, bids us gently to care about Andrew and Sam and even Mark, leaving us entertained in the best sense. This movie is as confident, as secure in itself, as comforting, as a well worn pair of house slippers or your favorite reading chair. A splendid film. Grade: A- (09/04)
Arnheim’s body of theory suggests that the necessity of human intervention to implement plot, tropes, and culturally legible symbols raises a film to a higher level than a mere copy of reality, and that this interpretation and expression of meaning is “a question of feeling” or intuition on the part of the filmmaker. (“Film Theory and Criticism” 283) One consequence of effective directorial intervention is that differences in speed, stops and starts, and what would otherwise be jarring gaps in continuity can be accepted by viewers, because if the essentials of reality are present, th...
The Latin American film genre is one of the most known genre worldwide and one of the most popular and successful of all of the genres in this business around the world. Yearly a number of productions from Latin America become favored and demanded successes, often-earning high levels of recognition and recommendation. In foreign film categories and in events and functions such as the Oscars, which are very highly respected around the world, Latin American films are awarded and praised and unquestionably make audiences sit on seat’s edge to bear mind films being produced in countries here. Latin American films are most likely to be as successful as they are because of the mixture of all of the elements, which their cinema provides, including
In Hollywood, the films are very straight forward with the idea or messages that the director is trying to reveal in order to keep American viewers hooked on to the film. Whenever a foreign film is Americanized, there are always significant changes in the character’s love life between one another, and the organization of the plot; from the symbolism of the film with the theme of the films are altered. This method is very effective because American audiences want to understand the whole concept of the film, where the language is understandable and the film makes sense. American films tend to have more action, drama, terror and a bit of narrative in between to keep the audience entertained and not bored out of their minds while the foreign movies
Perhaps an even stronger testament to the deepness of cinema is Darren Aronofsky’s stark, somber Requiem for a Dream. Centering on the drug-induced debasement of four individuals searching for the abstract concept known as happiness, Requiem for a Dream brims with verisimilitude and intensity. The picture’s harrowing depiction of the characters’ precipitous fall into the abyss has, in turn, fascinated and appalled, yet its frank, uncompromising approach leaves an indelible imprint in the minds of young and old alike.
In conclusion, I have demonstrated how Coppola exploits a wide array of sound and editing to create suspense, intensity, and anxiety in the sequence to affect the audience’s emotions, using diegetic ambient sound effects, non-diegetic music, voice over and four editing types. With this sequence, Coppola has shown the savagery of war and our complicity in this violence as an audience.
Music can decipher a narrative event by indicating a perspective. To unify a set of diverse images and provide rhythmic and formal continuity and momentum, a film’s structure is more often than not, directly articulated by a musical structure. Music can assist the dialogue and visuals of film and often is inaudible (e.g. music is meant to be heard unconsciously, not consciously). Music has been used by directors to reinforce or strengthen certain weak scenes in film and then on the other hand when music is not needed to reinforce a scene
Spike Jonze’s film Her reveals the increasing complexity of intimate relationships concordant with the ever-growing presence of technology in our lives. In the frequent—almost excessive—moments of bright, lively red, we see the hope, desire, or even existence of intimacy. However, the few juxtaposed moments lacking red create a serious, threatening distinction between life with and without this sense of closeness and affinity. Through the powerful, effective use of mise-en-scène elements, tone, and off-screen space, the viewer gains insight into a possible future without intimacy as Sam and Theo’s relationship evolves and eventually corrodes.
Sofia Coppola's film, "lost in translation" offers a perspective of the global world, highlighting globalisation and its impact on human nature. She uses the protagonists to examine the difficulties and faults humans make when navigating through modern codes of language, sexuality and building a connection in a alien culture. Her film evaluates an impossible relationship, infused with ambiguity, misinterpretations and tension, to comment on the constraints in a seemingly limitless world.
Unlike any other movie, Gasper Noe’s Irreversible (2002), with his own unusual but unique way of telling a story, shows how violence roots from love, how pain roots from pleasure, how imagination roots from reality and how death roots from life. This movie focuses Marcus and Pierre’s battle with the illusion of justice to avenge Marcus’ girlfriend, Alex, from her atrocious fate. And beginning this with the ending, Gasper Noe has created not just a realistic and powerful movie but has explained, as well, what it means
Since the creation of films, their main goal was to appeal to mass audiences. However, once, the viewer looks past the appearance of films, the viewer realizes that the all-important purpose of films is to serve as a bridge connecting countries, cultures, and languages. This is because if you compare any two films that are from a foreign country or spoken in another language, there is the possibility of a connection between the two because of the fact that they have a universally understanding or interpretation. This is true for the French New Wave films; Contempt and Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and contemporary Indian films; Earth and Water directed by Deepa Mehta. All four films portray an individual’s role in society using sound and editing.
The importance of music in movies is highly regarded for manipulating the viewer’s emotions and helping them immerse into the story. Music is one of the prime elements in cinema. Without it a movie would feel dull and unexciting. There are three elements in a movie: one is acting, the second is picture, and the third one is music. It is a holy trinity; if incomplete, there would be a lack of sensation and excitement. Both acting and picture can stand independently from one another, but music is the one that makes the movie memorable.