RIP Ebert
Well, I loved this movie. I loved the way Coppola and her actors negotiated the hazards of romance and comedy, taking what little they needed and depending for the rest on the truth of the characters. I loved the way Bob and Charlotte didn’t solve their problems, but felt a little better anyway. I loved the moment near the end when Bob runs after Charlotte and says something in her ear, and we’re not allowed to hear it.
We shouldn’t be allowed to hear it. It’s between them, and by this point in the movie, they’ve become real enough to deserve their privacy.
That’s Roger Ebert on “Lost in Translation”, a movie that had me wandering in my head for weeks afterwards.
Often we are at a loss to understand and express why something touched us. We feel the sharp jab in our souls, but lack the words. “I loved that movie!”, is all we can say, flaccidly.
Roger Ebert filled that void. He gave words to feelings many of us didn’t know we had, that were stirred by movies. We often mistake a movie review as pure opinion, as something everyone is entitled to his own distinct view of. But Ebert touched on the underlying universal constant that is the same in all of us.
That was his power as a human who felt, and then magnified that using his words.