I keep coming back to this film, and if you don't know this scene, then it is the final scene, or the almost final scene - the bitter before the sweet - the bittersweet - from the film Lost in Translation.It is the moment we wonder whether or not will happen (or I do) for the entire film. I wonder, or keep wonder, whether or not they will kiss, for there is clearly a 'thing' going on between the two, and never mind the age difference, which may be 13, 14, 15, or more years, but does it matter? It may even be more than that, but i'm not certain that's the point. In fact, I'm quite sure it is not the point.
What I am sure is that each is going through a crisis in life and in their separate loves and having doubt and here they are, somewhere in Tokyo, utterly lost and alone, lost in life, their spouses far away (in Charlotte's case, for that is her name here), her husband may be with her, but he's not 'with' her. He's too busy taking photographs, flirting with stupid action star 'Kelly' and leaving Charlotte to wonder who whe has married. It's even funny when she calls a friend from her hotel room, over-looking the city and hum and buzz and says "John has started using these hair-products, you know... and I went to this shrine, and these monks were chanting, and I didn't feel anything..." Her friend (some friend) on the other end of the long-distance wire, seems clueless to Charlotte's upset, tears, or seriousness and ends the call with "Have the best time..." Charlotte, as she will tell Bob later, is 'stuck.'
Like Bob, who may not be as vocal about his problems - at least not to Charlotte - he too is stuck. He is not connecting with his wife Lydia (even when he seems to genuinely try it fails) and no matter what, both Charlotte and Bob seem or are rather fated to keep crashing and smashing and falling into each other. It's so obvious and inevitable then that they may as well become friends and actually just go somewhere instead of keep up some absurd pretense or ignore the fact that they keep running into each other - why not run into each other ono purpose? That sounds like more fun anyway, yes?
To keep it simple, for I don't want to get too deep into plot more than the main point I wish to make, Bob and Charlotte spend a great deal of time together and in a brief time, there is between them a real and palpable connection. It's the sort of thing that you know it when you see it, and maybe you've even had it in your life and if you have, then you really know it. What you want to know, is who, if anyone, is going to make the move from simple friendship to the validation that both need - perhaps a kiss is all that is needed - that little line - to take that little tiny skip (for that's all it would take here). All it would take on Bob's part would be perhaps just to just hold her hand and kiss her. This doesn't seem sordid to me. It seems sweet and under the circumstances, it seems wholly understandable.
It would mean something; yes, both are married, and if we are to judge in this context then we can overlay all sorts of moral issues, but the situation is too complex for that (and i say this after studying philosophy for most of my life, and seeing now that life is nothing if not shades of grey). What I want, perhaps what every viewer wants, is for something definitive to happen...again, that word validation comes back, because even though we know there is more at work here, we don't know. Does that follow?
We want some declaration. There is an 'almost' hovering here. Bob and Charlotte will fall asleep on the same bed; he will gently hold her foot while she sleeps; he will hold her hand when they run across the street; she will lean her head against his shoulder when she tires; all of this and yet... She will even get jealous when he, and even knows, stupidly sleeps with the hotel lounge act. When Charlotte sulks, and he knows why, he also calls it right when he says, "Wasn't there anyone else there to lavish you with attention?" But it's not a question. It's a statement and not a nice one at that. The point though, is that no matter what Bob may say, he does want to lavish Charlotte with attention and has been. He has grown to love her in some way and she him.
The problem for most people, and this is why perhaps the film is called what it is: Lost in Translation - is that this relationship defies any neat categorization. It's not as simple as Right or Wrong. Sometimes, capital letters do not apply. And you cannot say that it is love or non-love or friendship or non-friendship because it is love and friendship and a love that transcends friendship so the two are by no means "ordinary friends" the way one would be with other friends. They are, in every day parlance, "more than friends."
But the end scene. The one I chose to show you here; this is after Bob has said goodbye to Charlotte at the hotel. It is already now "over." Partings have been said and we think, somewhat disappointed, after all that, then it is after all, just like life. Nothing happened. No, we perhaps did not expect the two to have a wild affair for that would be unfitting, but a kiss - this is all... but that did not happen at the - goodbye-scene - and this much breaks our heart.
It is when Bob's car, on the way to the airport passes the sidewalk and he sees Charlotte that he tells the driver, somewhat impatiently, to stop the car now... and after fumbling with the lock and door, he is free on the street and runs through the crowd to Charlotte. It is certainly unexpected. We certainly do or did not expect it. Charlotte did not, and I doubt Bob himself expected it either. But there you have it and there they are, on a crowded street in Tokyo, now facing each other when he just holds her in his arms and pulls her close and she has to stand on her black ballet-flat tip-toes just to reach his shoulder.
It is then that Bob whispers something in Charlotte's ear. We are not privvy to his words and never will be. I can take no guess at what this could be or was and maybe that's just as well because i can fill in the blanks this way and make it my own. Maybe that is what Coppola intended when she wrote that end. I'm not sure. I know that it makes, as you see here, Charlotte tear up, break down almost, and that she holds on as tightly, yet with such gentleness, to her friend.
It is only after this - after he has said what needs to be said - what he has needed to say all along, one thinks, that Bob does what, thank god, we have needed him to do all along - he kisses Charlotte. Not a brief kiss on the cheek, but a full kiss on the mouth that lasts and lasts, with neither wanting to let go as Charlotte stands on the tips of her toes still, reaching up to his mouth while he embraces her.
Thank god, I think. I can breathe. It's not that the whole film is about a kiss. It is rather that the film has been building up to this moment and one thinks at the end that the moment was going to slip by and to watch this so, to think it so the first time is almost painful.
But after this - after the car has stopped, after Bob finds Charlotte on the street, after he whispers what he whispers, after she leans on his shoulder as a friend yet not friend, after they kiss as lovers yet not lovers, after they do what they do have done and will always have as friends but more than this (which is a song that Murray sings in the film - "More Than This" by Roxy Music, during which he looks at Charlotte a great deal - another part of a long, drawn-out flirtation in which both are coy, shy, bashful.)
It is good to know that sometimes, as Milton said of so-called 'backward lovers' that the 'coy shall bashfully yield..." How much it must have taken for Murray (Bob Harris in this role) to step outside of himself and walk up to Charlotte so boldly, and how brave of her to accept what was offered and not freeze, not run, and more, to steady the course the entire way through all of this. To maintain her patience and believe that this was or was not meant to be.
Some things are fated and there is nothing you can do about it no matter how hard you may pull against it. One has to ask anyway, why the need to pull?
Thanks for listening.
s.h.r.p.
