Procrastinet

An Open Letter to Sofia Coppola

filed under: Stuff you never, ever needed to know

Dear Ms. Coppola:

Last night I watched Lost In Translation, via my newly reissued Netflix membership. Sorry it took me so long - what can I say, it's been a crazy year or two. Congratulations on all of the acclaim that the movie has brought you.

I must say, however, that I am concerned about the long-term effects of that acclaim on your career and artistry, as I'm afraid it may have reinforced and supported some bad decisions - or, more to the point, one egregiously bad, movie-ruiningly bad, scornfully and contemptuously bad decision - which you made in regards to the film.

[SPOILER ALERT: Anyone who is living even farther under a rock than I am and has thus not yet seen Lost In Translation should be aware that I am about to give away the "ending" of the movie, after the jump, below. You have been warned.]

I refer, as you have probably already guessed, to your decision to render Bob's last line to Charlotte inaudible to the audience.

Now, I am sure you have many justifications in your mind for this decision. It is probably, to you, the entire conceptual cornerstone of the movie, the feather in the cap of the whole achievement.

You are incorrect. It is crap. And a cop out. And an insult to those who have spent one hour and thirty-one minutes of their lives watching your movie to that point.

Why do I say this with such assurance? Here's why:

There's this little thing in the world of dramaturgy (or, to put it less pretentiously, "storytelling") called "Dramatic Structure." It's probably very passe among the cinema cognoscenti, but it is important to pay heed to nonetheless.

In this Dramatic Structure there is, traditionally, something that scholars refer to as the "Dramatic Question," and it is in pursuit of the answer to this question that the audience engages with the narrative at hand. One classic example is in Oedipus Rex, when the audience wonders, throughout, "when Oedipus learns that he has, in fact, killed his father and married his mother, will he/won't he totally freak out and gouge his eyes out and wander mad for the rest of his lifetime." The answer, as it transpires, is that he will.

With me? Good.

Since filmmakers, for all their high-falutin ways, are fundamentally not that far removed from the shaman dancing around the fire telling the assembled tribe how Serpent boinked Turtle and made The World, films tend to contain at least the rudiments of Dramatic Structure, including a Dramatic Question. It may surprise you to hear it, but your film bears these primitive artifacts.

The Dramatic Question, if I may be so bold, could be stated as "will/won't Bob and Charlotte figure out a satisfactory conclusion to their impossible situation." That's why we're watching. That's why we care.

You may have thought that we were watching to admire the filmmaking, to get a (well-executed) simulation of a purgatorial travel experience in an unfamiliar city, or for many other possible reasons. These are, no doubt, factors, but they can't really be called primary.

No, Ms. Coppola, primary is the vulgar interest in people - to wit, the people that your movie purports to be about - and the situations these people find themselves in and try to deal with.

When writing your screenplay, you had the power to answer that question in any way you chose. You could have answered "no, they will not figure out a satisfactory conclusion, because their situation is, in fact, intractable." This would have set you the challenge of making that decision acceptable to an audience who has invested the above-reference 91 minutes, but it is in itself a totally valid choice.

Alternatively, choosing as you did to answer "yes, they will indeed figure out a satisfactory conclusion," you set yourself the challenge of figuring out what, in fact, that conclusion *was.*

Except you weaselled, didn't you. You had your actors mime for us their satisfaction, without letting us poor schlubs in on how they pulled it off. And in so doing, you undercut everything the movie had, to that point, achieved - because the sum of that achievement was that we actually gave two shits what the answer turned out to be.

I'm sorry that I had to resort to this public dressing-down, and to the draconian measure of rating your otherwise quite excellent movie a mere two stars on Netflix. But I'm convinced that in the long run you'll see I have your best interests in mind.

I apologize again for weighing in so late, and hope that I have reached you in time. If you wish, I'd be more than happy to take a look at drafts of your future projects to prevent further mishaps along these lines.

Best of luck,
R

Posted by rjt at January 25, 2005 01:07 PM