Saw it in cinema as a teenager and it absolutely transported me. I just loved the mood of it all, the way it looked and sounded. Dreamlike and hazy in the best way.
Now I live in Tokyo and I've rewatched bits of it here and there. It's hard to know what to make of it. I live centrally and I've been to the hotel it's set in several times so it's odd viewing. Speaking a bit of Japanese now (eg enough to follow what the Japanese director is saying) certainly creates a different sense, too. The Tokyo I saw in Lost in Translation in 2000-whatever I can never return to.
The one bit I found truly objectionable is when Bill Murray speaks English at the sushi chef and says all sorts of horrible things to him about "are you eating human toes" or whatever.
Thank you for your honesty about that first viewing. I think that's really cool and, actually, a defence of the film in a way. If it is/was capable of transcendence, then that's great. Thanks also for your insight as someone who actually moved to Tokyo. The "are you eating human toes" thing is, to me, emblematic of the whole film's attitude to Japan and otherness in general. It just isn't curious about otherness at all. It doesn't look at what makes another culture interesting: it just rolls its eyes. This would be bad enough on its own but it's the fact that it asks to be rewarded for it.
I have a high tolerance for pretentious wank. I really am one of those pretentious wankers. I think artists should try to do better. I love
Being John Malkovich and I don't mind
Eternal Sunshine (though tbh, it feels like an unnecessary expansion of what
BJM managed in one sequence).
It's just the self-righteousness of this one. It has a Stewart Lee-like "we are smarter than the audience" attitude except it's not for laughs, really isn't smarter than the audience, doesn't know it's not smarter than the audience, and got lapped up for some reason by the critics.
Fuck it!
Arse!
Bollocks!
Grandma!
etc.