Drive My Car (2021)
dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Rated: N/A
image: ©2021 Bitters End
“You must endure your sorrow,” Sonya, the niece of the titular character, tells her uncle in Anton Chekhov’s moving play, Uncle Vanya. The characters in Drive My Car are enduring their own sorrow. Unlike the bleak worldview of Uncle Vanya, though, which works brilliantly as a text-within-the-text to comment upon and enhance the story in Drive My Car, the characters do more than simply endure. The film is a meditation on finding human connection in the hardest circumstances. It’s filled with the beauty of the human spirit.
Based on a short story from author Haruki Murakami’s 2014 collection Men Without Women, Drive My Car is a sprawling, contemplative study of grief and resilience. The adaptation was co-written – with Takamasa Oe – and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who released another critically well-received film in 2021, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, alongside Drive My Car. While the latter film is technically based on one story in the collection, Hamaguchi and Oe pulled elements from other stories in Men Without Women for the epic-length picture, which clocks in at one minute shy of three hours.
The story follows actor and theater director Yūsuke Kafuku. His wife, Oto, is a screenwriter for television and she has a rather unique process of getting inspiration for her stories. She narrates her story ideas to Yūsuke during sex. (The first 30 minutes of Drive My Car is a powerful exercise in erotic cinema.)
He recites them back to her later, when they’re not in the heat of passion, so that she can expand and refine them. Unbeknownst to Oto, Yūsuke discovers his wife cheating on him when he returns home after a canceled flight for work. He slips back out of the house unnoticed, devastated by the revelation.
Later, Oto tells Yūsuke she needs to talk to him about something after he gets home from work. Not wanting to face the news he suspects is coming, Yūsuke avoids going home for as long as possible. When he does return, he finds Oto unconscious on the floor. She has died of a brain hemorrhage.
Then an unexpected thing happens. At forty minutes into Drive My Car, we get the opening credits sequence. Hamaguchi deftly – and very effectively – makes the point that life can change in an instant and that what you thought of as your life can feel like only a prologue with enough hindsight.
Two years later, Yūsuke has accepted an artistic residency in Hiroshima. He will direct a multilingual adaptation of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya; he broke down during a performance as the lead in the same play not long after Oto’s death and has been unable to perform in it since.
For his residency, he has requested living accommodations about an hour drive from his work space. The reason is so he can listen to an audio recording of Uncle Vanya on the drive to and from work. Oto made the recording for Yūsuke for the production of the play he was working on before her death.
The residency directors have no problem with Yūsuke’s request, but he is assigned a driver. A previous resident artist hit someone with a car, so the organization now requires a driver for insurance purposes. Yūsuke is resistant at first, but he is won over by Misaki, a 23-year-old woman who proves she is an expert chauffeur.
A slick mainstream Hollywood production would probably turn the bonding story between Yūsuke and Misaki into something cloying and emotionally manipulative. In Hamaguchi’s hands, their journey is wonderfully delicate. The film’s transcendental cinema aesthetic and patient pacing let the connection happen organically. Their bond forms slowly, almost imperceptibly, as they begin to open up to one another and as their relationship blossoms.
Hamaguchi performs a masterful storytelling stroke using subtlety. Human connection is the central theme of his film – and presumably of the source material – but the ways in which he makes us think of that central theme are layered and nuanced. In the opening minutes of Drive My Car, we see Yūsuke performing in a multilingual adaptation of Waiting for Godot. There is a large screen above the stage on which the dialog is projected in several different languages.
The same process is to be used for Yūsuke’s production of Uncle Vanya, the rehearsal of which makes up the bulk of Drive My Car. Yūsuke casts a Japanese speaker for the role of Vanya, a Korean sign-language speaker as Sonya, a native Mandarin-speaker for another role. This unique approach speaks volumes – without Hamaguchi or his characters ever having to explicitly say it – about the power of art and storytelling to bring people together, to act as a social and emotional bonding agent.
Hamaguchi allows his story and characters to unfold like the petals of a flower. If you allow yourself to fall into the movie’s rhythm, you are rewarded with quiet revelations full of searing emotional impact. Two of those revelations center around the character Kōji Takatsuki, who is playing the role of Vanya in Yūsuke’s production. The young actor became a celebrity years ago while working with Oto for television productions, but his career has since stalled because of a murky scandal. Yūsuke casts Kōji as Vanya – despite the young actor’s reservations about not being old enough for the role – and Hamaguchi keeps us at a distance as to Yūsuke’s true motivations.
A bravura sequence late in the film is all the more so because, while it reveals mysteries of the plot via emotional devastation, the whole sequence is made up of a shot/reverse shot conversation between Yūsuke and Kōji in the back of Yūsuke’s car. Azusa Yamazaki’s editing focuses on reaction; we see either Yūsuke or Kōji’s face as they listen to what the other is saying.
Acting is reacting, as the old cliché goes, and Drive My Car serves as a master class in acting technique and theory, not only through moments like the one I mentioned above, but within the story as well. There are several extended scenes in which we see Yūsuke working with his actors on Uncle Vanya, one of the most highly regarded plays ever written.
I will be the first to admit that I know next to nothing about the craft of acting – if you could see my attempts at acting in a few student films from my college days (luckily you can’t), you would see firsthand how little I know about it. The eloquent way that Yūsuke and his actors speak about the process of finding a character through collaboration with one another almost made me think I understood how it’s done.
Hidetoshi Nishijima is guarded, almost to the point of being opaque, as Yūsuke. Through the performance, we never forget the pain and trauma that Yūsuke is experiencing, but Nishijima holds a stoic reserve that makes the character all the more intriguing.
Tōko Miura is pitch perfect as Misaki, someone dealing with her own personal traumas that she slowly reveals to Yūsuke over the long commutes back and forth from Hiroshima. To put it bluntly, and colloquially, Miura’s Misaki gives zero fucks about how others perceive her. It’s a strangely captivating take on grief.
If there is a criticism about their dynamic throughout the film, it’s that both characters are so cold, it often reads as emotionally distant; then again, that’s probably the point.
Along the way, we are treated to myriad other revelations, like the hidden relationship between one of the residency directors and a cast member. The movie provides an unexpected resolution for Kōji, the man who Yūsuke, and the audience, suspects might have been sleeping with Oto before her death.
Drive My Car is a surprise in so many ways. It’s a tender three-hour rumination on grief and trauma that puts on display how vital human connection is to our species. Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi strikes an incredibly delicate balance between mystery, emotion, and heartfelt empathy.
Why it got 4.5 stars:
- Drive My Car is a measured, contemplative film about loss, grief, and human connections. Hamaguchi has crafted a piece of art that is impossibly delicate and, at times, ethereal.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- One of those ethereal moments comes in an image as simple as two hands holding cigarettes sticking out of a sunroof (see image at the top of this review).
- I was fortunate enough to have a passing knowledge of Uncle Vanya because of the phenomenal 1994 film by Louis Malle, Vanya on 42nd Street. I won’t go into too much detail here, but trust me, you should make time for it. I first saw it eight or 10 years ago, and I planned ahead, knowing that Drive My Car centers around a production of Uncle Vanya. I watched Vanya on 42nd Street a day before I screened Drive My Car, to refresh my memory, and it made the latter film a richer experience.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Drive My Car is available in theaters, and with an HBO Max subscription. It’s also available for purchase or rent on most digital platforms.