Drive My Car
A Japanese drama set in the world of the theatre introduces us to a remarkable filmmaker.
For many, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi will be a new name although this Japanese director was born in 1978 and has been making films since 2007. Whatever its predecessors may have been like (and they include one that lasted five hours and another, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, which is due on our screens soon) viewing the first quarter of Drive My Car is an absolutely stunning experience. This too is a long film (179 minutes) and this substantial opening section stands apart as a kind of prologue (indeed it is only after it is over that we get the long-delayed title credits). Although the rest of this fascinating film will play out two years later in Hiroshima, this preface takes place in Tokyo and proves to be the most straightforward part of the film and also the most compelling.
This first section introduces us to the central character, Yüsuke Kafuku played by Hidetoshi Nishijima. He is a man of the theatre both as an actor and as a director but we meet him first in the intimacy of his bedroom where his wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima), wakes up and regales him with an intriguing tale about a teenage girl who makes secret visits to the room of the boy with whom she is besotted. Oto is a writer noted for treating erotic themes and her ideas for them often take shape when in bed with Yüsuke. But, while the marriage seems to find the couple well-matched, Yüsuke is troubled by suspicions that are by no means unfounded regarding Oto’s fidelity. In particular, he suspects that she is having an affair with a younger actor, Köji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada). Although the husband’s stage work includes Waiting for Godot, he also favours classical plays and Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is a favourite. While playing the title role, he constantly studies all the lines in the play and regularly listens to a tape on which Oto voices the words of all the other characters. In this way he can rehearse his own lines in the pauses left for that purpose and the tape is one that he regularly plays as he travels in his car to the theatre.
As all this suggests, the Tokyo section of Drive My Car has plenty to offer as it establishes plot and characters leading to a climax when Oto dies unexpectedly. Already it is apparent that Hidetoshi Shinomiya’s colour photography is superlative and that the actors are very well cast, but what makes the early stages of Drive My Car so exceptionally stunning is the fact that, as directed by Hamaguchi, it feels inevitable in its compositions, its camera placement and its sheer flow of the images. That is enough to make Drive My Car a film that no serious cinemagoer should miss.
After this introduction, the film moves on two years to take up Yüsuke Kafuku’s story. He is again working on Uncle Vanya but this time he is directing having been invited to stage it in Hiroshima. His wife may be dead but he still uses the tape with her voice on it as he prepares this new production and he would have liked to be alone in his car when listening to it. However, the theatre dramaturge (Yoo-rim Park) makes it clear that he must have a driver and the person appointed is a young woman named Misaki (Tôko Miura). Initially he is rather hostile to her presence but over the following weeks, as we see auditions followed by rehearsals and then by the first performance, a rapport develops between Yüsuke and Misaki. In a conventional tale, this would lead to romance and similarly there would be more explicit drama linked to Yüsuke casting Köji Takatsuki despite this youngster being an unlikely choice for the role of Vanya. The uncertainty of the motive behind it intrigues us since this is the actor with whom Oto had been involved and Yüsuke is intensely sensitive to that despite the time that has passed.
As the main narrative of Drive My Car proceeds, one comes to realise that, although a story is unfolding, the film’s central concern is less with plot as such than with the questions relating to human experience that are thrown up in the course of it. Uncle Vanya is famously a play about people living unhappy lives and Drive My Car shows us actors taking on the roles of these characters whose tangled emotions they are seeking to understand in depth. But, if acting involves assuming a role, here it is as though Chekhov’s characters are revealing the inner lives of those playing them. Indeed, Chekhov’s play is as relevant to the lives of Hamaguchi’s characters as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman was in pin-pointing issues affecting the contemporary Iranians portrayed in Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman (2016).
The later scenes in Drive My Car find us learning more about the characters as they discover more about themselves - that applies to Kafuku, to Misaki (whose own back history takes on special relevance late on), to Köji Takatsuki and even to the dead Oto. This illustrates how hard it is to fully understand people since so much can be hidden, be this on account of a single person projecting different images of themselves or of a deliberate withholding of information about key moments in their history. We follow the story being told here but are aware that we are being positively invited to ponder for ourselves what it reveals about human nature and what that it tells us about ourselves. This extends to an awareness of complexity in an individual, the possible co-existence of attitudes and actions that can seem to be opposites. That makes Drive My Car an unusual but memorable film. Even so, any fears we might have about a short story (this one by Haruki Murakami) being expanded into such a long film are not wholly inappropriate. For the most part the time taken does seem apt and one senses that, regardless of his starting point, Hamaguchi has created something fresh that is essentially his own. Nevertheless, certain scenes do drag (the readings of the play are particularly extended and such details as Kafuku’s staging being multi-lingual do not feel inherent). But, whatever doubts you may have, Drive My Car stands out as a remarkably accomplished and individual piece, challenging at times but undoubtedly essential viewing.
Original title: Doraibu mai kâ.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tôko Miura, Reika Kirishima, Yoo-rim Park, Masaki Okada, Dae-Young Jin, Sonia Yuan, Satoko Abe.
Dir Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Pro Teruhisa Yamamoto, Screenplay Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe, from the short story by Haruki Murakami, Ph Hidetoshi Shinomiya, Pro Des Kagamoto Mami, Ed Azusa Yamazaki, Music Eiko Ishibashi, Costumes Haruki Koketsu.
Betters End/C & I Entertainment/Culture Entertainment/Drive My Car Production Committee-Modern Films.
179 mins. Japan. 2021. Rel: 19 November 2021. Cert. 15.