"Lost in Translation" (2003)
The character: Bob Harris
What about him: A boozing, self-loathing American movie star
stuck in Tokyo to shoot a Japanese whiskey commercial befriends a young
woman (Scarlett Johansson) feeling equally dislocated.
Murray moments: "For relaxing
times, make it Suntory time."
(The slogan even sounds like Japanese mistranslated to English.) And,
of course, his tender but jaded wee-small-hours karaoke performance of Roxy Music's "More Than This," in which the song becomes a
weary expression of existential doubt in the vein of Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?": "More than this -- there
is nothing -- more than this."
Analysis: "Lost in Translation" features another lovely,
quietly mysterious performance with an almost miraculous ability to draw you in.
In some ways Murray has become an exemplar of the Kuleshov experiment (the
Russian montage exercise in which an actor's blank face is juxtaposed with
images that seem to evoke different emotions from the same close-up): Just put
that almost immobile face on the screen and you can only imagine what's going on
beneath the skin.
(Note to Alexander Payne: You've gotta work with Murray. I
can't think of any other actor who might have been able to do Jack Nicholson's benumbed sad sack in "About Schmidt" and Paul Giamatti's wine critic in "Sideways." Can you?)
(Focus Features)
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