Last Bill Translation

[amnornes at umich.edu]

> drainer at mpinet.net wrote:
> 
> > I think that the closer you are to the Kanto region,  the further you are
> >away from Japan in so many other ways.

Interesting comment, although it all depends upon your reality. 

As it happens, I have only seen Kill Bill among the films on Aaron's list. The
interest of Kill Bill was basically that it was the fantasy film of a true
otaku with a basically unlimited budget. Nothing to the film, except the joyous
reproduction of the things he loves. One big, neat _collection_ of mayhem. 

As for Last Samurai, I'll wait for the video. It seems to be what you'd expect
from a bunch of dumb Hollywood fans of Kurosawa. The typical American treatment
of "traditional Japan" rammed into a clean Hollywood mold. 

Unfortunately, each of my attempts to see Lost In Translation has been foiled,
although I did get to see Coppola do her star turn at the Viennale. Looked and
sounded rather obnoxious, like the interviews. 

But I did have a fascinating conversation about Lost in Translation the other
day. It was with Mark West, our specialist in Japanese law here at University
of Michigan. I asked him to write something up for KineJapan, and he offers the
following to y'all. Since much of the conversation on LIT has revolved around
whether or not Coppola "got Japan right," I think Mark's comments will be of
great interest. He spent a bit of time as a practicing lawyer before becoming
an academic, so he's experienced Tokyo the way few of us have. 

Markus

=======================

I spent about a year living in Tokyo hotels when I was in law practice, with
a schedule of 3 weeks in Tokyo and 1 week in New York (bad idea).  I would
get sick of each hotel, so I took the Tokyo tour -- Imperial, Okura, Prince,
Four Seasons, Dai-Ichi, Hyatt.   Actually the experience was even more
surreal than that suggests -- all day every day was spent at a makeshift
office designed to house about five regular attorneys from my firm who were
on the same awful schedule, as well as something like fifty staff attorneys
hired specifically for the case and a bunch of forensic accountants, all of
whom were living in the hotels as well.  The only difference between me and
most of them was that I speak Japanese, but you can't tell this by looking
at me.

So when I heard about Lost in Translation, I thought I would hate it.  I
loved it.   The film did a wonderful job of portraying the loneliness of the
whole situation and how it drives people together.   Night after night, we
went through the same routine of expense account dinner followed by lots and
lots to drink.  After a few weeks of this stuff, you run out of stuff to
talk about, but the liquor takes over, so you either (a) talk gossip about
people that you know or (b) tell family secrets.  This leads to lots of deep
friendships, some of which are just based on false intimacy, some of which
are not.    (I recently sent an email to a person who I knew there but had
not spoken to in 6 years; she immediately began telling me the deep dark
secrets of her marriage.)  So when Bill Murray sits on the same barstool in
the same New York Grill atop the same Park Hyatt Hotel where I used to drink
my whiskey on the same rocks, and when he immediately strikes up an intimate
relationship without batting an eye, I got it.  When he wants to call his
wife at home but not really, when he wants to hear about the kids but not
really, when he vacillates between pining after his wife and trying not to
think of her at all, I got it.  I had the same conversations he did (I was
not as clever -- but with the whiskey, I thought I was), I listened to the
same lounge singer, stared out at the same lights, changed shirts before
going out in the bathrooms of people that I didn't know a month earlier (and
watched TV with them at 2 a.m.), and made the same stupid jokes (the one
about how the Japanese switch their rs and ls "for yuks;" the obnoxious and
totally insensitive remarks at the sushi chef's expense etc.).  The point is
not how sad my life was (oh boy was it ever), but that Sofia Coppola just
nailed the whole thing so perfectly.

I also thought the movie did a great job of portraying the loneliness of
Japan -- and not just the loneliness of the Park Hyatt.  When the gang goes
out to do things that they would never do back in the States -- Bill Murray
talking surfing, singing karaoke, and running from shady characters -- it
captured both the release of that for the foreign gang as well as the lack
of that option for lots of stoic Japanese.  I think that for a lot of
Japanese people, Japan is a lonely place without much to do -- the fun and
interesting people, or lots of them, are at salsa bars or small apartments
with large bongs.  So when the Japanese group seemed also to be letting go
just as the Americans were, I was surprised again at how well she captured
the situation.

I did get a little uncomfortable a couple of times.  I thought that the "lip
my stocking" scene was a riot, but was too slapstick -- and if it had
happened, the reason it would be important would be because you would talk
about it afterward over and over and it would get funnier every time.  I
thought that the Japanese movie entourage was made to look a little too
stupid.  And I cringed at Matthew Minami's performance as the Japanese
Johnny Carson, but for the wrong reason -- I actually think Matthew Minami
is pretty funny when he is on Japanese TV, so when I saw him on the U.S.
screen doing the same thing, I was embarrassed to find that I actually like
such a thing, suggesting that I have spent far too much time in Japan (or at
least far too much time watching Japanese variety television).

And brilliant casting of course..  Murray without dialogue was just as good
as Murray with dialogue.  And Scarlett Johansson didn't even seem to be
acting so much as she was just hanging out with Bill Murray.  We used to sit
around and talk about who would play us in the movie that they would make
about our time in Tokyo.  We didn't have a Scarlett Johansson per se, but we
did have a 22-year-old recent Ivy League graduate who was not quite sure yet
what she wanted to do with her life. I now fancy myself in Murray's role,
but so does every other straight male that I keep in touch with from the
case, I think -- which just lets you know how real it was.