“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.
