Lost in Translation | STICKY FILMS
2am on Tuesday: I found myself immersed in the world of Dakota Warren, a poetess & performance artist, that my YouTube algorithm articulately slung at me. I fell headfirst into her English dark noir coquettish world, rather envious frankly: here on earth for a quarter century, and she knows who she is. Is it a privilege? Is it inherent? Performance art? A commitment? A bit she’s also fallen headfirst into?
Or does she know who she is? Have I fallen victim to the belief that she’s simply fallen out of a coconut tree?
At 32 I’m constantly grappling with how to be. To be perceived. Likely the curse of social media. In some ways, I yearn to conform to a box: all of my questions, thoughts, words, meals, book selection, wardrobe, art, existing to make sense. To feel cohesive. Not only in the eyes of the world, but to myself. The barrier is shallow to justify theoretics. Am I just a lazy fuck?
Experimentation is heartbreaking. Overwhelming. Exhausting. Flinging yourself like spaghetti at a wall to feel at home within your mind, body, the world. And then you just don’t stick. It doesn’t stick. Something isn’t quite right. You're flopped back into the pot to keep cooking until you’re flung at the wall again…
Anyone else here a brooding introspective existentialist?
After quitting my corporate job of 10 years, I’ve found myself rebuilding who I thought I was. I keep morphing, grasping at anything to stick.
And I’ve found myself asking the question about creatives who demonstrate a groundedness, stylistically, in their work: how have they done it? When did they know who they were? Within the fluidity of all they create. We know the answer is experimentation. I suppose it’s easy to forget about the trial & error once a masterpiece receives its flowers. Is it a blessing we’re only privy to the fruit beared?
In an attempt to find myself, I wanted to consider the films that hold my right hemisphere in the palm of their hands. I’m certainly not a film junkie like my partner who studied film in undergrad. But I would be remiss not to discuss the movies that have inspired my creativity and, no doubt, millions of others.
Here marks the potential for a series (I don’t like making hard promises) about films that have stuck to me like a mashed blob of Bubblicious. I hope they’re films that have bonded to you or inspire a future watch. Let’s yap about them together!
Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola
If you’re a creative aimlessly trying to find your place in the world and you haven’t seen this film, please run to it.
Partly inspired by Sofia Coppola’s divorce between her and Spike Jonze, this film is set in the ethereal city of Tokyo where Bob Harris (Bill Murray), a disillusioned actor who’s filming a Japanese whiskey commercial, meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a recent Yale graduate, who’s tagged along a work trip with her photographer boyfriend, John (Giovanni Ribisi). While John is off shooting the majority of the trip, Bob & Charlotte develop an unexpected bond, navigating their own depths & demons among the neon lights, cigarettes, laughs, and karaoke nights.
I tend to be more captivated by the human experience and space. Not space as in outer space, but the in-between land where everything and nothing is always happening. The space we fill most of our days.
Every single frame of this film scratches the right part of my brain. I can’t let go. I don’t want to. I hope it lingers enough to creep itself into my own work. It is exquisite.
What gets me is Johansson filmed this at 17, and so poignantly portrayed the confusion of being a young adult girl stuck in the trenches of finding herself, navigating the world at a pace that feels aligned with my 32 year old self. Seventeen! I suppose the confusion of navigating the world at 17 or 22 or 31 or 40 is not all that different.
I find a deep connection to her character, Charlotte, gracefully trying to find herself. How to be. Who to be. Her infamous lost-girl-in-her-30s monologue beginning, “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be” is so embarrassingly relatable that I want someone to punch it out of me.
In accompaniment with the blueish lens Coppola uses to cast a nostalgic, ruminating desire that begs pondering, the original soundtrack, scored by Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, only enforces such wonder. It may be my favorite record in my vinyl collection to date.
To pick a favorite scene feels impossible. And maybe it is her monologue. Or, aesthetically, it could be the iconic baby pink-bobbed Charlotte and Bob having a cigarette in the zebra-wallpapered corridor outside the private karaoke pod.
Is there a specific scene from this film that’s anchored itself to you? Let’s gab about it in the comments because I’ll never shut up about this movie and I hope you don’t either!
Xo, Rebs
