Anyone who has followed my love of film for as long as they've known me are probably aware that I have an immense love for Asian cinema.
We are currently seeing a huge resurgence with South Korea as the immense success of films like Parasite, Minari, and the TV series Squid Game have led to significant interest in their culture. I also wish we could something of a surge for Japanese cinema as well.
In the past, filmmakers like Yosujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Hiroshi Teshigahara not only helped shape and define Japanese or Asian cinema as a whole...but world cinema in general. I hold great admiration and respect for all of these filmmakers.
In recent years, one of the preeminent Japanese artists who has garnered much attention is that of Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who gained prominence in 2018 with Asako 1 & II and this year, he has a one-two punch of Wheel of Fortune & Fantasy (more on that film another time) and Drive My Car, which is an adapatation of a Haruki Murakami short story.
There is one major connection to Drive My Car that instantly pulled me in: Anton Chekhov.
I feel like very few theatre artists from the history of the medium are as difficult to master and as remarkable to study as Chekhov. Many in recent years have written his plays off as being dry and stuffy but something about Chekhov always spoke to me dating back to years ago when I saw a magnificent production of Uncle Vanya that starred Derek Jacobi, Laura Linney, Roger Rees, and Amy Ryan (yes...Holly Flax is a stunning theatre actress in case you weren't aware).
Drive My Car tells the story of Japanese actor/theatre director Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) who has accepted an offer to take on a two-month residency at a theatre company in Hiroshima. There, he will stage an experimental, multi-lingual production of Uncle Vanya.
The movie begins two years prior where he and his screenwriter wife Oto (Reika Kirishima) are having problems with their marriage following the abrupt death of their young daughter, but she still serves as a source of inspiration of him when preparing for his own artistic endeavors. In one fell swoop, he discovers she is having an affair with a younger actor named Koji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada) and then after choosing not to confront her about it, she dies of a brain hemorrhage.
This is the place that Yusuke is in when he goes into rehearsals for Uncle Vanya and it is further made complicated when his deceased wife's younger lover Koji walks in for an audition.
Yusuke also still relies on his wife's creative sensibilities to prepare and requests the theatre company to give him lodging an hour away from Hiroshima so that he can have time to listen to a cassette tape in the car that features Oto. He hires a driver to take him to and from Hiroshima, a young woman named Misaki Watari (Toko Miura) with whom he develops a rather deep rapport on their commutes together.
Drive My Car is one of those movies that I knew upon hearing about its plot that I was going to respond to it rather strongly. The question was how strong it would be as some films aren't bound to live up to their reputation.
Critics have been embracing this film, even to the point that both the NY Film Critics Circle and the LA Film Critics Circle awarded the film Best Picture of the Year.
Critics aren't always right but sometimes, I love when they acknowledge great cinema even if it isn't in English...something the Oscars never did truly until they embraced Parasite.
Drive My Car lived up to its praise for me and it will definitely contend for a top slot on my Best of the Year list (battling with a film like The Worst Person in the World for example).
The film is very long: 3 hours. It is certainly one that you have to make time for as you will have to be sitting there reading subtitles for quite a bit. That may not be for everyone...just like you would have to practically bolt me down in a chair a la A Clockwork Orange to watch the latest Spiderman movie.
Drive My Car is also one of the best portrayals of grief I have ever seen...especially in how it relates to art. It sort of reminds me of Krystof Kieslowski's Blue in that respect. In that particular movie, Juliette Binoche's character Julie starts to overcome her grief by listening to a piece of music that her late husband was trying to compose. Here, Nishijima's Yusuke is trying to hold onto his wife by repeatedly listening to her cassettes while having her lover in the same rehearsal space as if he is trying to understand what exactly was going on truthfully in her mind.
He also finding a new connection with Watari on their car rides and both of them reveal a lot about their own grief and their regrets in life.
He also helps bridge the connections between the actors he is directing as many of them cannot connect due to language barriers between them...including one who is deaf.
The whole movie feels like a lesson on how to overcome grief and how to build connections with others whether it be simply because you are taking an hour-long car ride twice a day or you are staging a production of a very difficult piece of theatre.
This was a world that I felt blessed to be watching even if it may have been uncomfortable and difficult at times to witness.
Drive My Car will be rated as follows:
RATING: 5/5
(That was easy...)
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