Lost in Translation: The Idiot’s Guide to the Final Scene

One of the most charming final film scenes belongs to Lost In Translation, Sofia Coppola’s breakthrough film as writer and director. It’s famous for being an unheard, whispered line: people speak of the tantalizing possibilities of what may have been uttered as Bob whispers into Charlotte’s ear.

But someone by the name of vid22 has attempted, in what is one of the more masterful recent wastes of time, to “remove” some extraneous noise from the DVD to attempt to capture what is spoken. Rather than offering any intelligent response to the film, the author states that because of his work history removing noise from tapes for lawyers, he should be able to do the same with this film. That’s it; that’s his reasoning.

The only other real reason, it seems, for doing this and then posting it to youtube was to count how many viewers the video could draw. “I think it turned out rather well,” vid22 says, jockeying for an exciting career as a noise removal specialist.

This, I’m afraid, is the level to which the Internet and the imagination has sunk. Judging by the comments to the video, there is no concern for artistic intention or the fact that this killjoy has intruded all over an artist’s sacred ground. His main intention, it appears, was to draw viewers.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this. Content and meaning are becoming irrelevant in certain sectors of the Web: all that matters are the number of “new views per day.” Youtube is already dead.

Vid22 does not have a shred of an idea what artistic intention means, or its significance. His project is akin to re-writing the end of Casablanca, colorizing black-and-white films, or having David Chase walk into The Sopranos final scene and explaining exactly what is happening and offering audiences the unnecessary closure that so many have demanded.

Here’s the author’s tepid reasoning for hijacking the script:

“Just remember you shouldn’t hate the messenger, simply because you don’t like the message. After all, it’s only a movie.”

Bravo, vid22! You’ve achieved nothing!

There’s no proof that what vid22 revealed are in fact the final scripted words. Thankfully, Coppola and the actors have declined to reveal what these words are. And thankfully, vid22 will fade away into a career in noise reduction and his video will fade into Internet obselescence.