But if you left it up to me..

Directed by Sophia Coppola in 2003, Lost In Translation received critical acclaim and was lauded as a cinematic masterpiece. The movie centers on Bob Harris, an aging actor whose career and marriage are on the rocks. He arrives in Tokyo, Japan, to film an advertisement for Suntory whisky, running into some problems stemming from the language barrier between him and the director of the commercial.     The scene is played without subtitles, so as to allow the viewers who do not speak Japanese to feel as lost and bewildered as Bob does. His inability to understand what exactly it is that the director wants of him makes shooting the commercial a laborious task. This is a good example of how miscommunication can occur because of language based barriers, even if the use of exclusionary language is completely unintentional, such as in this scene.  Nonverbal communication also plays an enormous role in this movie, and emphasizes the extent to which Bob feels alienated by his surroundings.   The first photograph shows Bob in an elevator, towering over the rest of the Asian men, the second has Bob sitting alone in a room. In both pictures, Bob’s discomfort at being set apart from everyone else is  made clear through the use of facial expressions.  Another protagonist in the movie is Charlotte, a young woman who has recently graduated from Yale, and is in Japan to accompany her husband, a professional photographer, on an assignment. She, however, gets bored of being left alone while her husband is at work, and begins to explore Japan on her own.  Charlotte’s loneliness is especially evident during the later part of the video, when she walks across the snow covered courtyard of the temple. She is completely alone, with absolutely no one near her, which when cross referenced with Edward Hall’s four zones of personal space, is a clear indication of how alone she feels in a foreign land. The two main characters’ feelings of alienation from everyone around them, including the ones closest to them, draw them to each other, fulfilling their need for companionship. Although the movie’s ending is ambiguous, and leaves the audience to come to their own conclusion of what happens to Bob and Charlotte, I still feel that Lost In Translation is still one of the most well made movies in recent times.