What? People say Lost in Translation is a racist movie?
A number of people think that the Japanese encountered are Asian stereotypes. Among the complaints is the lack of any communication between the Caucasian tourists and the "funny little yellow people" may encourage western audiences to feel justified in their continued alienation of local Asians in their local community.
The movie instead does a good job of showing the results of poor, but supposedly professionally enabled communication between Murray's character and the advertisement director, improvised communication with no common language in late night bars where Murray and Johanson visit, but most typically it shows two foreigners visiting a country where neither speaks the language and struggling to make their own place in it. While it may be comical that the Japanese are speaking bad English from time to time, it is equally clear that neither Murray's nor Scarlett's character can even manage basic greetings, ordering their meal, or any other aspect of day to day life. To me, it's more an indictment of the monolingual Americans traveling and then being surprised when the world outside the US borders is unable to accommodate them.
