Lost in Translation

The scenes were so eerily familiar--billboards in foreign script; sitting up in bed all night; trying to figure out how to work the shower; turning on the television and not finding anything sensible--that I was certain one fo two things had to be the case:

1) Soffia Coppola, writer and director of the film, "Lost in Translation", was once a Peace Corps Volunteer

---or---

2) She was familiar with the foreign.

While choice one would make sense given how much the film, "Lost in Translation" parallels scenes from the cross cultural aspect of Peace Corps life, the entire movie itself is universally applicable to anyone who has ever experienced the foreign--and thus, the answer would be #2.

I say experienced the foreign instead of simply saying travelled because in today's world of cheap airfare and tourist packages, it is quite possible to travel and NOT get out of one's element. It is equally possible to stay in place and yet be privy to something entirely new and, well, foreign. This is what the foreign is after all: an experience--be it a place, person, event, or food-- that is so new that once experienced, changes the person experiencing it by providing that person with a whole new set of eyes.

The question then is...what exactly do we do with the foreign?

Bob (Bill Murray) suggests to Charlotte (Scarlett Johanson) that they flee but in the course of their fleeing, they end up throwing themselves against the very thing they were fleeing from--being lost. In a sense, they are not really doing anything new...only this time, they let their guard down. Gone is Bob's tuxedo and on is Charlotte's wig. This, I think, is exactly what we should do with the foreign--throw oursleves against it. No doubt the urge to flee is always present in the face of something entirely new and different but whether we do it conciously or not, by putting our guard down, we develop a power that transforms this urge from a desire to flee to a desire to embrace (granted it might be easier to embrace something entirely new if you get to embrace it with someone like Scarlett Johansen.)

But why embrace the foreign? Why throw yourself against something you could easily lose yourself in? The film's theatrical trailer offers these words,

"Sometimes you have to go around the world to come full circle"

This is a common thought among travelers--the idea of finding yourself only after you lose yourself; that enlightenment comes after trasversing the full circle. "The end of our exploring" Eliot wrote, "will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time."

I've always believed in the idea that traveling into the foreign is not about experiencing the "trouble free" packages offered by the tourist industry but it's about exploring the relationship between travel and travail. There is certainly alot of "travailing" when it comes to experiencing something new and it's in this travailing that we learn most about ourselves and what we are capable of. It is thus that we acquire new lenses and discover who we really are. This is why we embrace the foreign--because by embracing it, we grow in a way that only happens when we broaden our horizons.

And yet, while I am a firm believer that we find ourselves after we lose ourselves, I also like to stress that we need not always rush the finding part; that it is in fact okay to linger a bit amidst the being lost. If the viewing public did not have such a short attention span, I don't doubt "Lost in Translation" would have had more scenes of Bob and Charlotte being "lost" in Tokyo. There would have been at least 2 more photo shoots, 4 more talk shows, 7 more commercials and a dozen more nightlife scenes. 3 more ladies would have asked Bob to "lip" their stockings and Charlotte would have seen 2 traditional weddings, 1 funeral and 6 festivals. There would have been a whole lot more "lost" in the movie.

I know the next 2 years of my life will have a lot of "lost in translation" moments...I've had several already. And while I know that eventually I will become more fluent in the language and I will understand the culture better, I'm definitely enjoying these moments. Besides, some of the stories just would not be as enjoyable if I knew what was going on.