Review: Drive My Car

Image courtesy of Janus Films.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "Drive My Car" may be based on a short story - one by the great Haruki Murakami - but it plays like a novel, not just in its expansive three-hour running time, but also how it teases out its themes and secrets gradually at an unhurried pace. This is the type of film that will take some patience from the casual moviegoer, but its payoff is huge.

The film takes its time to get where it's going - in fact, its credits don't roll until about 40 minutes after an extended prologue - but the film makes every minute count. The opening sequence involves theater director/actor Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) having a post-coital discussion with his wife about a story she's developing for a screenplay she's writing. It involves a young woman who often sneaks into the home of a boy with whom she's smitten, often leaving a memento in her wake and taking something of his. The story has a mysterious element to it, and we learn over time that Yusuke's wife had her own share of secrets.

At one point Yusuke stumbles upon something unpleasant involving his wife - although we later question whether he already knew about it - and she suggests they talk about it that night when he returns home from work. But when he gets home, he discovers her dead from an aneurysm. 

We jump ahead two years, and Yusuke has been hired by a cultural organization in Hiroshima to cast and direct a performance of "Uncle Vanya," a play with which Yusuke is intimately familiar. In years past, he frequently played the titular role in Anton Chekhov's play. This time around, he's decided to forego playing the character himself, telling another actor that Chekhov's play has a way of forcing the truth out of those who confront it, and it seems clear that Yusuke isn't in the right place mentally for such things.

One element that makes Yusuke's version of the play interesting is that his cast doesn't all speak Japanese - there's a Taiwanese actress and another who only speaks sign language - so the performance has all of the actors speaking in their native tongues with subtitles on a screen above them. 

During the rehearsal process, he realizes that he'd met an auditioning actor, Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), through his wife some years before. The actor has since gone on to become a TV star - and was involved in some sort of controversy - and Yusuke gives him the leading role, but seemingly for the purpose of hounding him during auditions.

Meanwhile, the most important plot thread in the film involves the theater company's insistence that he have a driver during his time putting the play together. Yusuke drives a red Saab back and forth to work, and intentionally stays in a hotel far away, so that he can run lines with an audio recording of his late wife that he listens to while in transit. His driver is Misaki (Toko Miura), a taciturn but agreeable young woman who has her own tragic backstory that is only gradually revealed.

Both Yusuke and Misaki are hiding from their pasts and bear a burden of guilt for tragedies that weren't their fault, but which they somehow believe they could have prevented. At first, Yusuke only grudgingly accepts having Misaki as his driver - and even gives her the equivalent of a try-out - but eventually the two begin to click. For example, she understands how his rides in the Saab to and from work are important to him, so she aims to make them as smooth as possible - and holds her cigarette out the window so as not to disturb him.

Meanwhile, after an amusing plot twist involving a dinner invitation, Yusuke tells one of the theater group's organizers that he admires Misaki's flawless driving and is glad to have her escorting him places. She takes his compliment to heart, and the two begin a friendship, of sorts, despite the fact that she has to cart him around everywhere, from rehearsals to drinks with Takatsuki, who works overtime to attempt to impress Yusuke.

I'm familiar with Hamaguchi's previous work, but I've never seen any of his other films - something that I guarantee will be corrected forthwith. "Drive My Car" is a beautifully acted and made film about dealing with loss and, in the case of both of the film's lead characters, how this is transformed into a sense of purpose, Misaki with her driving and Yusuke with his work. Scenes are often reenacted from "Uncle Vayna" and it's uncanny how many of them provide commentary on what is going on in with the characters in Hamaguchi's film.

There are a number of very long scenes in which characters carry on conversations in Yusuke's car, but they are mostly spellbinding, especially one in which Takatsuki and Yusuke compare their versions of a story that Oto, Yusuke's wife, told them both. And after three hours of watching the film's various characters deal with their losses, the lovely final scene hints at the possibility of hope.

Due to its epic running time and leisurely pace, "Drive My Car" is the type of picture that makes you work a little for your rewards, but it's well worth it. It may be simple in terms of narrative, but what it says about loss and the necessity to continue moving forward are impactful and moving. This is one of 2021's best movies.