I can’t really go into a message board and ask why people like Lost in Translation without the discussion boiling down to people insulting my intelligence and me still being confused.

I mean, to some extent, I do like it. I liked Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. I mention this because one of the main criticisms against LiT is the lack of a plot. And I do like the melancholy tone of LiT and I appreciate Sofia Coppola’s direction, but there’s the protagonists act too superior, which kind of goes with the othering of Japanese people.

I think that’s what bothered me most.

There are a lot of people who talk about how the movie uses Japanese people’s pronunciation as joke material, but not many talk about how Charlotte also seems to look down on Japanese people.

Like the scene in the subway where the guy is reading manga and Charlotte is looking at him and back at the manga and suppressing a smile. Or when she goes to the arcade to look at people playing video games and scoffs.

I mean, I honestly can’t imagine white people not complaining if the roles were reversed. Like a Japanese person watching a white person reading a gossip magazine and playing video games or w/e and then laughing at them.

The other day I was watching Ramen Girl and in spite of the title and the movie poster, it seems to be a lot better in terms of portraying Japanese people without othering them. And the MC is the only prominent white character. The two other leads are Japanese and they had their own plot lines. On the contrary, I think one of the themes is to make the MC seem strange by comparison to the Japanese people’s normalcy.

I do think Ramen Girl tried to pay homage to LiT. Like the boyfriend at the beginning who was also a photographer or something and leaves to work in another place in Japan. Also, I like the magic realism.

I need to watch Tampopo.