I was talking to my friend the other day, and we got to talking about sad movies. Off the top of my head, I told her about a movie I haven’t seen in years and years, and its effect on me.

It’s got Bill and Scarlett in it. The movie has other people too, but it’s mostly about these two. And their complicated relationship. The movie opens, more or less, with Bill being a sourpuss. He’s a more or less washed up actor from Hollywood, traveling across the ocean in Japan, doing an advertising shoot for a whisky that he doesn’t particularly enjoy, but they’re giving him enough money that he’ll frown a bit less than normal for them when they point a camera at him.

So there’s Bill, being not really nasty, but more just aloof in that way that it feels like only Bill has ever been able to translate to the silver screen. So high above it all that one wonders if he will ever be able to come down. He’s being his usual aloof self, more or less ignoring the directions of the photoshoot director, being unhelpful in as not-un-pleasant a way as he can, and so on. And then when he’s not at the advertising shoot for the whisky he doesn’t really care about beyond the paycheck, he’s just bumming around his expensive hotel. Whether he made them put him up in an expensive, nice hotel is unclear. It’s possible that this is just the hotel he ended up in.

The point stands, however, that the hotel is nice. It has a nice restaurant, a nice bar, a nice pool, a nice gym, etc. And over the course of the opening few scenes of the movie, we watch as Bill goes blithely from one nice place to the other, feeling aloof, but now allowing a melancholy to seep in at the edges of the frame. We watch as Bill goes from expensive and nice restaurant, to expensive and nice bar, to expensive and nice pool, to expensive and nice sauna, and so on. Eventually, Bill begins to notice another white tourist who is also seemingly just bumming around the hotel. This would not be out of the ordinary if she were not a young and very attractive Scarlett.

So Bill sees this young and very attractive Scarlett around the hotel, and one night, he sees her at the bar, he sends her a drink, and they get to talking. More melancholy seeps past the edge of the frame. It eventually becomes clear the neither of them is particularly enjoying their time here in Japan. Bill because it signifies the death throws of a career that it seems like he more or less actually enjoyed, Scarlett because it seems as if it is the beginning of the end for a relationship that she seemed to have more or less actually enjoyed, once upon a time.

Scarlett is in town because her husband is a working photographer. He is some kind of big shoot, having been flown out to Japan to take pictures for somebody who found it imperative to have pictures taken in Japan by an American. The couple is, at present, growing distant from one another. Scarlett’s boyfriend (Possibly husband? Or fiance? I don’t recall — you may or may not have noticed, but this is all from memory after having not watched or thought about the film in at least five years. I may be totally misremembering the film, but I’m reasonably certain that I’m not.) has been consumed by his work lately, and it seems as if he no longer finds Scarlett a compelling subject. This is, as I’m told, not totally uncommon amongst creative types. So he dragged her along with him to this job in Japan, but now is leaving her totally unattended in the hotel for entire days at a time. Scarlett is terribly sad about this situation, as one might expect. This is, of course, compounded by the fact that she is in a totally foreign land and culture. She is alienated in both her intimate relationships, and by the world around her. Making her feel terribly lonely.

Bill reveals that he is also here at a crossroads in his life, and feeling totally alienated. By the aforementioned waning of his film career, of course, but also by the growing distance between himself and his own wife, who had elected not to come with him to Japan for probably unexplained reasons. So the two sit at the bar and bond over their shared alienation, and in doing so, feel so much less alone in each others’ company.

The film progresses from here in more or less the way one expects it to. Following their melancholic meet-cute, the two begin to spend more and more time with one another, eventually leaving the safety of the hotel and venturing out into the city of Bright, Bright Tokyo. As one expects, their relationship does not begin romantically. They both, after all, have other interested parties. This is a fact that keeps the melancholy at the edge of the screen from melting totally away. There is cast other the whole film a heavy blanket. A ticking time clock, that whatever happens here, is going to have to be wrapped up by the time they have to go home and deal with whatever sad stories awaits them there. But so long as they remain in eachother’s company, none of that is real.

There is a normal level of falling out around the end of the second act. As the reality of the situation hits Bill and Scarlett, that this is not a thing that will last forever, or even probably to the end of the month. The resolution is typical.

What I find so compelling about the movie is Bill’s face. Through every scene, he has a look of absolute dread bolted on. As if he can see the future, and see how poorly things are going to work out eventually. And how easily he as an actor is capable of translating that to Blade Runner levels of beat-you-over-the-head narration with just his face.

The narrative of the film is only subtly different from most movies of its type. Most romance films center their narrative around the journey the characters go through to fall in love, and imply that there is going to be a happily ever after once they overcome whatever roadblocks they’ve been running in to. For Lost In Translation, a film starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, The central conflict is rather about the transient moments of love. Brief, impermanent, passing moments where two people find themselves in total sync. And accepting that these moments, by their nature, are not good fodder for happily every afters.

The film is about two people in very different, but very similar places in their lives. Many things are changing that once seemed totally certain. They are both feeling very alone in their new surroundings. The future of their careers and partnerships are more uncertain now than ever. And yet, they find in this uncertainty and doubt, camaraderie, and eventually intimacy.

Perhaps I should now watch the film and see how right I am, eh?