Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

14 September 2003

Lost in Translation

2003, U.S.

director: Sofia Coppola

Sofia Coppola's second movie, Lost in Translation, is a beautiful, melancholy meeting of souls starring Bill Murray as Bob, a successful actor past his prime, and Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte, a young woman still trying to find her way. They're separately in Tokyo, Bob for a whisky endorsement and Charlotte tagging along with her husband, a busy photographer. Bob spends his days shooting commercials, dryly mocking everything around him while Charlotte sits alone in her hotel room, taking in the 180-degree view as if she's suspended in a bubble above the world, hugging her knees with a restless craving for purpose.

Coppola, who not only directed but also wrote the original screenplay, taps into the natural strengths of these two actors which makes the characters enormously likable. While I'm not sure I'd call the movie a comedy, Murray's performance is among his funniest, composed of witty remarks that he tosses off just to amuse himself or maybe to make a girl laugh. Charlotte, when she's not curled into a ball in her hotel room, wanders quietly through the city, searching but not sure for what, observing people through the eyes of a philosophy major as she visits both a temple and an arcade where people act out roles in front of video screens. Coppola shows us these characters separately, allowing us to pick up their attitudes from the way they roam, from the way they notice things around them, similar to the way Claire Denis tells us about her characters in Friday Night, another movie about a chance meeting of isolated people in a vibrant city.

When Bob and Charlotte strike up a conversation in the hotel lounge, we realize that their views are not only compatible but maybe even the same, with Bob's just 30 years further along. They both feel gaping holes within, but where Charlotte responds with fear, Bob applies cynicism. They speak non sequiturs into telephones, but the loved ones on the other end, across the ocean, fail to decode the deep misgivings in the conversations. As a result, Bob and Charlotte find each other, and the highlights of the movie are their quiet conversations about life. Not grand, all-encompassing philosophies, but little bits of wisdom and emotion.

The movie builds some suspense around the question of whether these two will get together romantically, whether it would be forced or creepy if they did, whether their relationship would devolve into a pop musical montage involving cotton candy and merry-go-rounds or instead be punished by the movie gods who force them into a tearful separation. This is what I was wondering as their relationship developed, but more importantly I believe this is what the characters were wondering, too. Without saying it, they behave as if they understand their unusual situation and recognize the full weight of their every action, rare traits among funny or attractive people in movies. The ancillary characters tend toward caricature — I imagine that Coppola identifies with Charlotte, and that Murray identifies with his character, but I suspect that no one among the filmmakers quite has a handle on Bob's wife who we hear several times over the phone — but in some ways this works to the movie's advantage, giving Bob and Charlotte a tighter bond and bright crisp edges where characters outside the spotlight seem hazy.

Coppola presents a loving portrait of Tokyo, and the way Bob and Charlotte feel about each other is similar to the way a lot of people feel about a foreign city they visited at a certain point in their lives, especially if the visit made them reflective. Can you stay in that city forever? Sure, but most people don't. Too few movies feature funny, intelligent, scrupulous people having honest conversations. This is one of them.

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