To do justice to talking about this undeniable masterpiece, there are some minor spoilers of events depicted in the early stages of the film contained within this review.
From a glacial perch of an expansive windowed Tokyo condo, a couple caress, relishing in a post-coital embrace. Their skin is porcelain in the sumptuous dawn light against dark sheets. Drawn into the intimacy of this moment, Oto (Reika Kirishima) is conjuring a story.
In the process of absorbing the intimate and twisting tale, you can’t help but be struck with feelings of intrusion and fascination. And yet, a cloud of trauma is encamped around this sex inspired creation.
“Drive My Car” is one of the most powerfully raw movie experiences this critic can remember. Director and co-writer Ryusuke Hamaguchi and co-writer Takamasa Oe adapt a Haruki Murakami short story and create an impactful, nerve exposing rumination on love, the safety of our weaknesses, and the things that we’re tethered to in loss.
Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is an acclaimed theatre actor. His wife, Oto (Kirishima), is an acclaimed screenwriter and TV producer. After an unexpected change of plans, Kafuku returns home from an audition trip and makes a painful discovery. In his retreat, he has an accident that reveals undiagnosed glaucoma.
Clinging to his ability to drive, Kafuku cruises listening to a rehearsal tape of Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” made by Oto, deep in mounting denial and contemplation of his health and the reality of his relationship.
Unfortunately, Oto suffers an embolism on one such drive, leaving Kafuku to discover her body vacant, her soul departed. Some time passes after Oto’s death, and Kafuku joins a regional production of “Uncle Vanya” as director. He is assigned driver Misaki Watari (Toko Miura) to transport him between the theatre and his lodgings.
Co-writers Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe use the scaffolding of the tension of Haruki Murakami’s “Drive My Car” short story and build the context for Kafuku’s career, his process and his relationship around the inherent power of Chekov’s 1898 play.
At one point in the film, Kafuku explains to one of his performers (the sage and meditative Yoo-rim Park as mute actor Lee Yoon-a) that he’s no longer equipped to perform the play as the titular Vanya because Chekov’s words drag the real out of him. In some ways, Hamaguchi uses “Uncle Vanya” in “Drive My Car” the way that the Taviani Brothers use Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in “Caesar Must Die”.
In both films, the play performance has a way of revealing who the characters are in the movie. Likewise, the Taviani brothers’ subjects found a way to access humanity, self-reflection, and perhaps rehabilitation for the real-life prisoners (it is, of course, loosely a documentary). In “Drive My Car”, the actors’ rehearsals create ways for them to reveal further how their characters act in the imposition of Kafuku’s obsession with the rhythm of the words. The repetitions of their repetitions, soaking in their immersion and watching the more profound exploration impact the way they interact outside of the play, is something to savour.
There’s a deliberate shift in location from Tokyo in the short story to the city of Hiroshima, which provides the place for the stage production that occupies the second two-thirds of the film. It’s not simply the characters in the movie keeping up appearances to make any progress to the next moment and the next day of living.
The entire contemporary city of Hiroshima creates a facade of order, civility and composure over profound grief. The serenity and order of the town directly contradict the unfathomable destruction and long-standing impacts of atomic bomb impacts and fall-out – absolutely inform the viewing.
As Kafuku takes more time to get to know his stoic and laconic driver Watari, he requests that she take him to places she likes in the city. In one instance, they are staged on sea-side steps, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi composes their poses on a descent, the camera adopting a high tilted (dutch) angle. Hamaguchi’s formal choices drive the characters deeper towards something.
On another outing, Misaki takes Kafuku to the city trash processing centre. Stepping inside from a public viewing platform, shrouded in the red hues of hazard lighting, she admires the falling trash, its steady fall reminiscent of ash. It’s impossible not to feel like a sense memory of the birth of contemporary Hiroshima out of an atomic cataclysm.
The soundtrack by Eiko Ishibashi sneaks up on you. Its application is a surprise because for so much of the film, the atmosphere is provided by the haunting legacy of Oto’s voice on the rehearsal cassette. Eiko Ishibashi music is a marriage between The Album Leaf and M83; the instrumental arrangements are somehow hidden yet soulful and nurturing.
In “Drive My Car”, Kafuku’s signature design of the play is to use performers based on their ability and not their language. This requires the performers to memorise the flow of the play and cues in languages they don’t speak (including English, Japanese, Mandarin and South Korean sign).
This conception of Chekov as multilingual creates a kind of Tower of Babel that these words in the process of translation converge for a kind of singular penetrating resonance. “Drive My Car” creates a textured gestural performance sphere that no matter the translation, there’s space for the actors to dwell in what they’re required to convey.
Kafuku designs his creative life around a commute, a tactical decompression, yes, but also another opportunity for him to constantly memorise the rhythms of the play and his performance – an actors equivalent of those extra rounds, that spare time in the gym. In this little red SAAB is a capsule to retreat.
Once he’s assigned Watari as a driver, he slowly allows her into his routine, playing this rehearsal cassette repeatedly. This trip back to his isolated lodgings is a form of stasis, dwelling in the comfort of Oto’s voice, retreating into the comfort of their old routine, quietly allowing the words to draw the real out of him in private.
Hidetoshi Nishijima’s performance as Kafuku is utterly spellbinding because of the ways he’s able to transmit a deeply truthful flaw; we hate the weakness inside ourselves, but it can also be a safe place. There are so many instances in our lives where self-preservation overrides instinct. If anything, the journey of “Drive My Car” is finding the truth in what your life is and who you are in it.
Toko Miura’s Misaki Watari is a fantastic driver. Smooth, soothing, and inspires Kafuku enquires how that came to be. Miura is a master of measuring her emotion that mimics her approach to driving. Miura tells a tale of a rough and abusive mother who would get physical every time her commuting nap was interrupted by a careless jolt of the car.
When this critic was a teen, I commuted by car quite a long distance to work every day with my brother. When he didn’t drive, he demanded that it should be smooth. Steady acceleration, guided breaking, calm turns with perfectly attuned turning lines, and because he was my brother, a punch, slap or curse out – especially if a sudden jolt woke him up.
My memories of that systematic hazing aren’t the window through which to expose the tip of an iceberg sized series of traumatic events like Misaki, but that conditioning sticks. The moment I heard it, I remembered the verbal and physical lashings.
I found myself sitting straight in my viewing chair, and while listening to the Ishibashi score, the muscle memory of stilling and serenity came back. Misaki is an orphan, Kafuku is a widower; as their commutes turn confessional, each character’s morality has been forged by the uncomfortable realities of their past.
By chance, Oto’s last production star and partner in extramarital relations, Masaki Okada’s Koji Takatsuki, auditions for the show. Despite the vice-like tension that his presence creates, his performance is impactful, and Kafuku selects him for the title role. From that moment, you’re constantly waiting for a confrontation, and it’s so brutally agonising and essential to the experience of the movie.
In the closing stages of this lengthy film, there’s a moment between Kafuku and Takatsuki that left me stunned like almost no other scene this year. When Takatsuki’s ride is not available, he asks is Kafuku and his driver Misaki if he can get a lift to his hotel. In the enclosure of the rear seat of the small two-door Saab, the men have a candid exchange about Oto.
Kafuku reveals his suspicions about her infidelities and tries to be fair to Oto about the grief that affected their relationship after the death of their daughter. Kafuku also shows this routine, Oto’s post-sex inspirations. During this confession, director Ryusuke Hamaguchi shifts the perspective. We embody the person listening to the depths of this disclosure. Actors Hidetoshi Nishijima and Masaki Okada pour through this fourth wall violation, and it simply bowled me over. I cannot even articulate the profundity of the moment.
Hamaguchi remixing Haruki Murakami and Anton Chekov in the cauldron of contemporary Japan (Hiroshima specifically) creates something alchemical and overwhelming. By the end of “Drive My Car,” you’re left staggered by the raw truth, the metaphysical, transcendent power of forgiveness. So take the wheel, share the load – “Drive My Car” says it best; we must live our lives.
