On its surface, Lost in Translation is a movie about culture shock between East and West, yet this reveals itself as a metaphor for more important themes of alienation and loneliness, and alternatively companionship. The film explores how these themes comingle at certain stages in life, against the background of highly modern Japanese cityscapes.

Bob Harris (played by Bill Murray), is an American movie star on the downward slope of his career who has come to Tokyo, Japan, to film a Suntory l commercial. His marriage has cooled off decidedly—his wife contacts him frequently, not to actually talk to him, but to get his opinion on carpet samples or to remind him that he forgot his son's birthday. Harris finds himself in a city and culture beyond his comprehension for reasons that he has trouble remembering. Scarlett Johansson is Charlotte, a recent philosophy graduate of Yale University, the wife of a Rolling Stone-type photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) on assignment in Tokyo. As both a hanger-on and a left-behind, she begins to wonder where she is and what she is doing, and who the man that she married really is. Her husband has more time for his work and young starlets (e.g., Anna Faris' Kelly) than for her. Bob and Charlotte, both lonely, lost, and sleepless, happen upon each other in the lounge of the hotel where they are staying (the Park Hyatt Tokyo) and strike up an unusual friendship. Courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Lost_in_Translation