Late viewing of “Japan through the eyes of Sofia Coppola”

If Bill Murray gets an Oscar for Lost in Translation, it will be because the Academy likes him personally, or likes watching an actor having a good time keeping a lid on emotion, or because it dislikes the fact that Sean Penn (Mystic R) never shows up to claim awards. All good reasons.

But how would you explain a win for Ms. Coppola? I’m not saying it’s going to happen. But what if? Would it be to finally recognize that there are credible women directors out there? Or to offer a personal word of encouragement to SCoppola and reassure her that this has nothing to do with her father? Or to try and convince people about the pleasures of staying home and not crossing any borders except those between states? A hint that we all should forget about flying an endless amount of hours to odd places where we’ll be so freaked and jet-lagged that we’ll hardly ever be able to leave our American hotel or the American bar within?

I’ve become an almost annual traveler to Japan for work reasons, and each time it confounds me, more so than any other country. Pico Iyer (see post below) lived for a year in Kyoto and managed to actually say profound things about people he met there. And me? By the end of each trip I’m not saying anything profound about anyone, but I am talking to myself rather loudly on the streets and getting really anxious over the absence of raw fish on Starbucks coffee lists (figure that one out). I listen to professors of law sing Elvis songs in Karaoke bars while women in kimonos refill plates of nuts and sea weed chips (it isn’t really a sing-along, it’s a listen-along). I never meet their wives. Even when I whisper and use a lot of question marks, I know I am speaking too forcefully and that the questions are too intrusive. I carry a towel with me, as does everyone else, and I wash my face all the time along with everyone else, and I drink the tea, and I interview countless judges and I don’t really understand a word they’re saying, even though I always have at least two translators. Only later, when I am back home can I begin to pull out something useful. In Japan, everyone around me – all millions and millions of everyone -- fades into one ocean of well-intentioned faces, smiling, encouraging, always polite, always sympathetic, always incomprehensible.

It’s interesting that the Japanese took this movie in stride. Last I heard you could book a “Lost in T” stay at the Tokyo Park Hyatt, where you would be taken on a tour of places where Bill hung out, shown the room where much of the “action” took place, and charged a whopping small fortune for it.

But why was this movie rated R?