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It's up to the audience to find purpose, meaning and interest in their lives when they can't.
The heroes of Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation are two such people.
Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a fading Hollywood film star who has come to Japan to film a liquor commercial.
He'd rather be getting the $2 million to make a movie but those offers just aren't coming any more.
Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is a young woman whose photographer husband John (Giovanni Ribisi) is on assignment in Japan.
Harris and his wife are separated by miles; Charlotte and John by a few inches, but the effect is the same. There's no communication beyond voices.
Bob is old enough to be Charlotte's father but the two lost souls are drawn towards each other because they can sense each other's angst and loneliness.
Lost in Translation is one of those wonderfully tragic love stories that Asian directors make so well.
Just as we sense these people could fulfil each other, we know that's not in their stars.
It's their unrequited love that makes them such tragic lovers.
This is a character Murray has played in numerous incarnations but what makes him interesting this time is that he turns down the decibels.
He never lets Bob rant, rave or go off on the kind of comic tirade that made him famous.
It's a commendable performance and one that he began honing in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, but it doesn't make it any less one-dimensional.
Bob is a sad sack who hates his life and fears he's beginning to hate himself.
Charlotte doesn't know why she married John which is precisely what the audience asks after seeing them together for five minutes.
She is a thoughtful, brooding intellectual. He is a self-possessed workaholic who has trouble stringing two thoughts together.
It's so obvious John would be better off with the vacuous actress (Anna Faris) who is in Japan promoting her latest exploitation flick.
Both Johansson and Murray strive for understatement to help show that age is not a requirement for emotional and intellectual boredom and angst.
Lost in Translation is a true art house film.
It's a lot of talk about nothing that pretends to be about great metaphysical meanderings.
Coppola shows she is as much in control of her cameras as she is her dialogue, which means she purposely lavishes both with an importance they rarely deserve.
This is a movie in love with itself, which can easily alienate its audiences as much as life has alienated its characters.
(This film is rated PG)