almost ENTERTAINMENT

SIMPLE WITH AN S.

a pick six

by Hunter Jon

Sofia Coppola taught me that simplicity is a very powerful artistic tool. More specifically, the ultimate cinematic one. I'm not sure if I’d ever seen a movie as seemingly simple as “Lost in Translation” but I know I’d never seen one that I liked so much. I fell madly in love with it when it came out and my love has only grown bigger and stronger over the years. And as if the movie itself wasn’t enough of an education, there is a line in the screenplay that single handed changed the way I approach writing scripts. It’s from the moment when Murray’s character first enters the hotel. He’s handed a fax from his wife telling him that he forgot their kid’s birthday. The stage direction then says, “He doesn’t know what to do with it and stuffs it in his pocket.” Perfect. That’s all you need to say. Because the audience isn’t reading the script. So she literally doesn’t need to say anything more than that. Nothing fancy necessary. Had I tried to explain the exact same thing I would have described the size and colour of the paper, which fingers he was holding it with, what happened in his brain as he read the message, the look in his eyes as a result and how his facial expression changed and how his teeth felt and on and on and on and it would have been unbearably bad writing. Then I would have spent the next two hours editing and rewriting that one blurb. So I’m pretty sure I’m a better writer because of her. Certainly a more productive one. She also told a story about a man and woman falling in love, and nothing else, but didn’t have them sleep together. Richard Curtis wrote a similar story around the same time with “The Girl in the Cafe”, which was full of romance and political commentary. To me, it wasn’t half the movie Sofia’s was. I should probably also mention that she directed hers flawlessly. Her direction matches the simplicity of her writing and then she soaks the whole thing in a kind of subtlety that takes a ton of talent. Mixing simplicity and subtleIy is a lot harder than it sounds. Just ask Elvis. But if done right, it makes the whole effort look effortless. And she did such a good job of doing exactly that on “Lost in Translation” that the entire industry and a slew of aspiring directors saw it and naively thought, “That’s easy. I could do that. All I need is Bill Murray or someone comparable.” But they pretty much all failed. Try as they did they couldn’t do what she did. Some would argue that she herself has failed to capture that magic in everything she’s done since. I mostly agree with that. Mostly. Some would argue that that is proof she was never that talented to begin with and she just got lucky with one movie. I don’t agree with that. Even if I did, I would still be a huge fan. I have her to thank for teaching me when not to move a camera, when not to write a monologue, when not to overthink or overdo things and, perhaps the most important lesson of all, that it’s not always about sex.

Here’s my ranking of every movie Sofia Coppola has directed. I’ve rated each out of four stars.

(I’ve included the appropriate amount of honourable mentions)