Drive My Car

"Drive My Car" is a slow moving story, but it glides effortlessly that you would not think it is too long or too slow. Events are unveiled eventually in good time. The characters draw you in as well.

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's adaptation of a short-story of the same name by Haruki Murakami is an extraordinary three-hour experience. Hamaguchi and co-writer Takamasa Oe not only expand upon the brief source material, but also dare to take on one of the great works of literature in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, weaving it into the very fabric of their screenplay.

Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima in a beautifully modulated performance) is a Tokyo Theater Director and Actor who travels to Hiroshima to be in residency at a local theater group putting on a performance of Uncle Vanya. The production is to be multi-lingual including Korean, Mandarin, Tagalog and even a sign language performer playing the role of Sonja (an angelic Yoo-rim Park). A dashing young actor from Kafuku's past, Koji (a suitably arrogant Masaki Okada), appears for the auditions to the Director's surprise.

One of the stipulations of the residency is that Kafuku is to have a driver at all times. She arrives in the form of the quiet and introspective Misaki (Toko Miura; guilelessly effective). Reluctant at first, Kafuku accepts her. Part of his method is that he likes to take long drives in his car while listening to a specially recorded audiotape of Uncle Vanya. It's during these trips where both the title comes from, but, also provides a basis for their relationship even though few words are exchanged between them.

While some knowledge of Chekhov's play may be helpful, Hamachuchi and Oe provide ample quotations and re-enactments of the crucial portions of the text for the uninitiated. Further, the film is far more than a clever parallel to the play. It takes its time to develop all of the relationships, developments and entanglements. The movie begins with a long prologue from two years prior with Kafuku and his wife Oto (a luminous, mysterious Reika Kirishima) - also a writer. It's over a half an hour before the credits roll, but the prelude's resonances reverberate throughout. The opening scene is scored by Eiko Ishibashi with a foreboding wail which is later echoed in a crucial sequence. The details always matter in Hamaguchi's direction - many of them unspoken.

Like a fine play, the earlier acts create the necessary build-up for the climax and resolution. The structure is like a mystery box, opening its secrets stage by stage. Even the last act is never rushed. Each scene, each nuance, carefully weighed and delivered. It's all brilliantly balanced by Director Hamachuchi and his cast. DRIVE MY CAR is well worth the journey.

Things are left unsaid but it's too late, the time has passed but moving on stagnates, the engine sits and dwells, the seas disturbed with swells, as thoughts revolve, left unresolved, and memories rotate.

A reflective piece of filmmaking that idles along at a sedentary pace but never stalls as the lives of two severed souls journey through their pasts together and untwine the chords that shackle them to memories and moments of regret. Beautiful performances all round through a subtle and imaginative approach that will leave you contemplative and reflective, perhaps even more so if you have a similar scenario performing in your own background.

Hamaguchi is an expert on dialogue: it feels vivid, provocative and thoughtful. He wants to make us think in life choices, relationships and how do we show what we really feel. "If" is the question mark always present that make us think about all the different ways and possibilities in life. How we treat the others. They way they see us and our actions. How do we want to be seen.

I would like to have love Drive My Car as much as most people. I think it is a good film, but just that. I think is way overlong - and you feel it -, I think that some plots are probably unnecessary and that it develops in a very predictable way. I also think it's not the best film of the director this year, even if it will stay with me for some time.

Drive My Car, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature Film, and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 94th Academy Awards, is a critically acclaimed Japanese melodrama. The story revolves around four key characters. Protagonist Kafuku Yusuke is a renowned actor and theater director with a calm and quiet demeanor who is shocked to discover that his wife has a sexual relationship with a much younger man. His wife Oto is a creative and expressive mind who conceives ideas for her screenwriting while and after having sex. Young actor Takatsuki Koji seems to have a self-confident swagger but starts questioning his whole existence after a relationship with a minor destroys his career and leads to excessive media coverage. Watari Misaki is a young woman who suffered mental and physical abuse from her unstable mother in Hokkaido and started a new life as driver in Hiroshima. This movie explores the relationships between some of these characters and deals with overcoming challenges in general and processing loss in particular.

This movie convinces on several levels. First and foremost, the aforementioned characters are authentic, detailed and profound. Viewers will discover more about them with every single scene and care about their fates. Especially their flaws make it easy to empathize or even sympathize with them.

The acting performances are also very convincing. Especially the actresses truly deliver the goods. Kirishima Reika shines in the opening of the movie as free-spirited, imaginative and mysterious screenwriter. The very best performance might however come from Miura Toko as skilled driver in an identity crisis who doesn't speak much thoughout the film but transmits many emotions through precise body language in general and subtle facial expressions in particular.

Drive My Car is filled with many artistic, intellectual and philosophical references. This goes along with the artistic, creative and expressive characters. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is particularly referenced in the beginning while Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya receives much attention through the movie's middle section and ending. It also is no coincidence that the movie's setting shifts from downtown Tokyo to Hiroshima and its rural surroundings. Attentive viewers will also realize that the closing scene takes place in South Korea. These numerous subtle elements are complemented by an elegant soundtrack featuring classical music and the use of a red Sab 900 that represents individualism and nostalgia in a time of colletivism and change. This movie offers much to discover for an intellectual audience and is worth being viewed on several occasions to discover new facets.

The film is however not without its flaws. The running time of three hours includes a few minor lengths here and there. Especially the introduction that takes more than forty minutes before the opening credits appear could have been shortened a little bit. Some of the theater play practises and sequences also overstay their welcome and can at times be somewhat pretentious with passages featuring numerous foreign languages from Korean sign language to Taiwanese Mandarin.

At the end of the day, Drive My Car is a melodrama with emotional depth and intellectual details. This timeless film should please anyone looking for profound dramas built upon authentic characters. Patient viewers will be rewarded with a story that resonates long after the movie has ended.