Sophia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" in the Age of "Liquid Modernity" (PDF)

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Film Science, grade: A, University of Melbourne, language: English, abstract: In this essay, the author examines the ways in which Sophia Coppola's film "Lost in Translation" (2003) tackles the discomfort experienced by two strangers living in an age of liquid modernity. This movie becomes a 'liquid love' story, in which characters Bob Harris (played by Bill Murray) and Charlotte (played by Scarlett Johansson) meet in at the Hyatt in Tokyo and engage in a somewhat ambiguous "love" affair (ambiguous because it sits between platonic and romantic love). Bob Harris is a worn out movie star who is getting paid two million dollars to endorse a whiskey ad and Charlotte is a recently graduated philosophy student who struggles with existentialist boredom and unemployment. Charlotte and Bob bond throughout their stay in Tokyo through what may be referred to as 'Mixophobia,' a term coined by Bauman to describe that which "manifests itself in the drive towards islands of similarity and sameness amidst the sea of variety and difference". In Tokyo's "sea of variety and difference" Bob and Charlotte find sanctity in their similarities as they bond over their American backgrounds, their unhappy marriages and their general sense of meaninglessness.