Bill Murray: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

3. Bob Harris - Lost In Translation (2003)

It's something of a disservice to Lost In Translation that most of what remains in the memory concerns what Bill Murray whispered to Scarlett Johansson at the end: in creating something that was supposed to not matter, Sofia Coppola unwittingly built a cult around a moment that distracts somewhat from the rest of the film. There's something quite wonderful in imagining that Murray's Bob Harris is the closest thing audiences have seen to how he genuinely feels about the film industry: world-weary, abused for gimmicks and content to just do interesting things between actually having to work. Perhaps that's why the role is so believable; why the sadness that's never explained or even really brought up is so palpable and why his loneliness is so perfectly sold? Having built a career on caricatures, Lost In Translation was Murray's confirmation that he could be hilarious without artifice or massive silliness and the pleasure of his cultural odyssey is entirely irresistible.