What if Lost in Translation and Her were the same film? Released a decade apart, they share many common elements

And what if Lost in Translation and Her were the same film? What if they were linked by an unbreakable sequence of events? Despite being released a decade apart, it's impossible not to dwell on the numerous common elements that make up the narrative and, above all, the emotional state of the protagonists they depict. Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) as well as Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) both appear suspended in an unlimited time where the voices of their respective partners seem to fade more and more, eventually disappearing forever, while remaining eternally imprinted in their minds. Certainly, one of the first connecting elements that stands out is how both films could be the explanation, the atonement, that led to the separation of the two directors who conceived their respective movies, Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze, translated in the portrayal of what that period meant to them, years apart. Charlotte, Sofia Coppola's alter ego in Lost in Translation, finds herself thrust into a reality that doesn't belong to her, in a Tokyo where the neon lights determine the rhythm from day to night, and where hotel rooms become a representation of reality, all the while attempting to conceal the slow disintegration of a love worn out from being nurtured. Similarly, Theodore, a writer of love letters by profession, can't overcome the separation from his wife, inevitably wandering through a hi-tech Los Angeles where interpersonal relationships seem to be solely guided by machines.

As analyzed on The Artifice, Lost in Translation continually plays with the vast silences of a bustling city, serving as a metaphor for the lack of understanding between Charlotte and her husband. These silences transform into new sensory memories when a new figure to get to know, someone who could represent a new life for the protagonist herself, appears. The linguistic barrier that seems to be solely tied to a foreign city becomes, for Sofia Coppola, the world to non-verbally narrate the discomfort of feeling lost, the silence of absence. "The connection between Charlotte and Bob exists in the fragile pauses of silence. They meet in this small pocket of unproductive time where they feel lost in their personal lives. Perhaps they wouldn't have found each other or even noticed each other if this gap of space and time didn't exist. Fireworks and the bright moment of 'love at first sight' belong to Hollywood fiction. The bond between Bob and Charlotte is much subtler and subdued." In Her, on the other hand, the vehicle that allows us to connect with Samantha is solely represented by Theodore's earpiece. His auditory memory, the voice of a distant past, is not represented by a physical image but becomes the central focus of an urgent inner discomfort. The sonic architecture that Jonze constructs around him allows him to capture something significant about the character and anxieties of contemporary Los Angeles, increasingly similar to Sofia Coppola's Tokyo. Just like the city he inhabits, Theodore is trapped in a limbo between his private past that he doesn't want to let go of and an uncertain future that doesn't show great expectations. Auditory memory, as well as music, become a way for both protagonists to establish a vivid connection with the relationships they form at that moment: while Bob seems to dedicate Roxy Music's More Than This to Charlotte in a strobe-lit karaoke bar in Tokyo, hiding a meta-textual message about what their relationship seems to be, Samantha writes a composition for Theodore that can instantly capture, like a photograph, their two lives together.

The auditory process that Theodore goes through with Samantha leads him to atone for his own sins, to truly understand what led to the end of his marriage, and it's at that moment that the two films seem to have a perfect conjunction between images and words. As Ken Guidry explains on WhatCulture, Theodore finally comprehends all of this at the end of his psychological journey with Samantha. When he delivers his farewell letter to Catherine, his ex-wife, through voice-over, it's as if he's trying to reach the young woman looking out of the window in his hotel room in Tokyo. When Charlotte gazes out the window, she might be waiting for that message to travel through the airwaves and finally reach her, inextricably connecting two opposing expressions of a painful separation and the inevitability of relationships in modern life.