Today’s topic: cinematic poetry. What’s so special about Sofia Coppola’s Oscar winning drama Lost In Translation? For those of you who have heard something about it, it’s the story of two people who find themselves forced to stay in Tokyo for a week. The movie studies their growing relationship. It’s a delicate love story, not the one you’d expect. There is no raw sex scenes, no sweaty buttocks, no passionate kissing. It’s a story that vibrates and resonates inside each one of us and if it’s your first viewing of it, well… it’ll stick with you.

Sofia Coppola, daughter of world famous director Francis Ford Coppola, creator of The Godfather Trilogy and Apocalypse Now, writes from the bottom of her heart and with each passing minute we feel it more and more. Perhaps it’s her personal experience of a failed relationship (with director Spike Jonze) that makes this movie what it is or perhaps it’s the choice of shooting location (Tokyo, at its finest and scariest) that lets the film take us on a magical trip, inviting us to look deeper, beyond what’s on screen, deep down the characters’ flaws and personal struggles. The characters, you ask? Two lost souls, lost in a sea of misunderstanding and loneliness; Charlotte, played by a  superb 18 year old Scarlett Johansson, is the wife of an independent photographer who shoots local rock bands and punk singers. Bob Harris (Bill Murray, just watch) is on the other hand an aging Hollywood movie star tied by a contract to a whiskey commercial shoot.

Bob meets Charlotte at the hotel they’re both staying at. He’s smoking a cigar and emptying his second glass of Scotch on the rocks while she’s finishing off her fifth cigarette. She said she’d quit, but what’s the point? He said he wouldn’t get old, but what’s the purpose? They look for hidden beauty: she keeps looking out the window, he wanders through the halls of the luxurious hotel. He calls his wife from time to time, but quickly realizes that he’s only doing it because the etiquette says so. Both, Charlotte and Bob, are tired of being who they are or maybe, just maybe, they both don’t know for certain who they really should be. She’s a child and he’s moving on in years, yet they’re both at the same moment in life. Who am I? Why am I walking this way and not the other way? Why am I in Tokyo? Why can’t I smile? Why do I have to pretend to be someone I’m not just to make other people happy? These are questions that sound awfully familiar. We’re forced to obey rules, laws, respect the person next to us, behave this way, that way, talk in a certain manner, walk in a certain manner. That’s when Tokyo ties the two protagonists.

They hit it off, and no. It’s much more than a sexual short term relationship. It’s much more than friendship. It’s something each one of us would like to experience one time before leaving planet earth. The feeling you get when you meet someone who fulfills you. Understands you. Holds your hand and smiles. And you know it will all end soon. It’s a bond for the ages. A bond you’ll keep in your heart until the very last moment of your existence. Bob and Charlotte have that bond. They can be themselves only with each other. Bob can only show Charlotte his hidden melancholy, his fear of slowly vanishing into nothing, and Charlotte can share her insecurity and sense of regret only with the aging actor who won’t just kiss her and tell her “it’s going to be all right”. No. He will look her in the eyes, and let a delicate smile appear on his face. Or he will just caress her hair as if she was a newborn and give her a light kiss on the forehead as if it was her first day of school. It’s the mutual understanding that makes a true relationship possible and exclusive. It’s the mutual respect that counts whenever we look into each other’s eyes. It’s when we stop counting the passing of time, when we stop checking our answering machines and our electronic mail. It’s when we can walk in the street and shout at the top of our lungs and not feel embarrassed. They run through the narrow market streets of the Japanese capital, they crash parties and let their off-beat voices flow through the party’s karaoke. They go to bed together, like father and daughter, and watch each other slowly fall asleep. They talk about their ambitions, their unreachable dreams, their lost hope. They hold hands and make it look like there will be a tomorrow. It’s never gone. It’s there.

And when it’s time to go separate ways – Bob back home to his wife and job, Charlotte with her husband to another country – they know what it means. They won’t forget. And like that, Sofia Coppola writes and directs the love story of the century, a simple account of two people finding each other in the midst of chaos and desperation. Visual poetry at its finest, and when the two look at each other for the very last time, magic happens.

Bob whispers something into Charlotte’s ear. What? We don’t know. We can’t hear. That’s magic.