Tokyo, Autumn, 2003. Magic hour lighting, florescent adverts. Fuzzy Guitar. Kevin Shields. A young American rides an escalator; takes a train; discovers some shrines. Despite the over-privileged POV, Sofia Coppola's devastating Lost in Translation seemed to capture a mood for so many people at the beginning of the 21st century. One of uncertainty, of searching for something private, for authenticity, in an increasingly dense and overly connected world. Coppola certainly had her finger on the pulse of generation Y but it was her distant leading lady who seemed to embody the whole thing. It was the role which made Scarlet Johannson famous, but it also showed us the distant look which would make her a star.
It's a look which seems to take the torch from Hollywood's passing old guard. Indeed, Coppola has stated that she based her and Bill Murray's on-screen relationship with that of Bogey and the recently deceased Lauren Becall. The late, great actress famously admitted that "The Look"- so gleefully coined by Warner Bros' ad men- came as a result of holding her chin down to her chest to stop her incessant shaking until right before the cameras rolled. Her's was a look of world-weary defiance for a genre synonymous with shadows and betrayal, but Scarlet's is nothing like it. Her's is curious, a look which attempts to digest what the world's throwing at her, trying to find some simple beauty, perhaps, in all the chaos and information of 21st century life.
A great deal has happened since those fluorescent Tokyo nights. Scarlet's become, arguably, the great star of her generation; an old-school curvy bombshell in an era obsessed with size. Those looks have taken her to the murky waters of FHM’s
Sexiest Women and, arguably, the the even murkier waters of Woody Allen’s Muse.
She nabbed roles with drooling directors like Brian DePalma and Michael Bay and donned the slinky leather suits of Marvel's Avengers project too. For better or probably worse- this is Hollywood after all- the actress' beauty has become her defining characteristic, and it looked as if her once promising career was on the slide. And yet, over the last 12 months three brilliant, very different directors- from Maryland, Paris and London- saw something else. Something different, it would seem, than anyone had before.
Her, Lucy and Under the Skin appear to pluck on differing strings of the Science Fiction genre and yet all three are connected by a core idea. Scarlet's three characters- an infinitely expanding Operating System, a human being realizing her full mental capacity and a sexually predatorial Alien who lures men into a pool of goo- might not sound like comparable entities, and yet these three directors used them to ponder the same thing: If an unfamiliar, vaster intelligence were to take a good look at our home would it see the beauty of it or the horror? Would it find complexity or insignificance?
Leaving talk of the dreaded Male Gaze asside for a moment, what is it in those eyes and lips, that skin, that voice which caught the attention of Spike Jonze, Luc Besson and Jonathon Glazer? And what about Sofia Coppola too, when she sent her out- all wide eyed, existential and 19 years old- through the subways and shrines of the Japanese capitol. We marvel at Scarlet, she marvels a things.
The fundamental idea Sofia Coppola had in 2003 is not so different to the one Jonze, Besson and Glazer have had over the course of the past year, it's just the stories, the worlds and characters that have gone supernova.
The fundamental idea Sofia Coppola had in 2003 is not so different to the one Jonze, Besson and Glazer have had over the course of the past year, it's just the stories, the worlds and characters that have gone supernova.
But so has she.
