Clocking in at just a minute under 3 hours, Drive My Car is a Japanese drama from director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi that asks viewers to be patient and attentive. If you can manage that then there is plenty here to reward you, as you may have already surmised from the fact that this won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Hidetoshi Nishijima plays an acclaimed theatre actor and director named Yûsuke Kafuku, who we first see happily married to Oto Kafuku (Reika Kirishima). Oto is a screenwriter who tends to develop her stories, bit by bit, after sex. Unfortunately, she doesn't just wait until Yûsuke is available to get working on whatever story has her fired up, and he realises this when he walks in on her having sex with someone in their home. Slipping back out, unnoticed, Yûsuke decides never to mention this new knowledge. And then Oto dies. It's about 30-40 minutes into the film. The opening credits begin. The rest of the film, essentially, concerns Yûsuke helming a stage version of Uncle Vanya, being driven to and from his work by a woman named Misaki (Tôko Miura), and processing grief and confusion that hasn't really abated even two years after the death of his wife. Conversations with Misaki prove helpful, as does the process of working on the play.
Sex and love. They are two very basic needs for many people, and they are two things intertwined that shouldn't always be viewed that way. You can have one without the other, and perhaps more often than you think, but people always assume that the two are inextricably connected. Drive My Car looks at love and grief, for the most part, but it also shows someone who accepts that sex can be a whole separate issue, although things may have been leading somewhere he didn't want to acknowledge (on the day of her death, Oto left a message about wanting to have a conversation with Yûsuke, leading him to delay his return home as he was worried about what might be said).
Written by Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe (based mainly on a short story by Haruki, Murakami, from a collection entitled "Men Without Women"), Drive My Car is a very sweet and very moving look at the personal battles everyone can face as they struggle to move beyond their own past, whether that's the sudden loss of a loved one or the trauma of childhood abuse. Circumstances may vary, but you can always find people who have had to figure out a way to deal with their pain. It may be trite to say that a problem shared is a problem halved, but it can also ring true. Sometimes just realising that you're not the only one carrying such a burden can start to help you lighten your own load, and saying things out loud can be a big part of that process.
Nishijima is excellent in the lead role, a man who can obviously tap into emotion when delivering a stage performance, but who tries to keep everything else bottled inside, mistakenly thinking that some precious memories he has are his alone. He is a broken man, someone who has patched himself up and thinks his quick-fix job will help, and his sense of guilt manages to be both hidden within him and there for all to see (he learns the lines of his play from an old tape that has Oto reciting the other lines while he speaks in the spaces in between, an act that feels like an obvious display of self-flagellation to me). Miura is also excellent, starting off as a very quiet driver who just happens to be present for a number of scenes before opening up with a few important conversations that explore past pain and suffering in a very matter-of-fact manner. These things happen, her character says, and they can continue to impact on your life, but that impact doesn't always have to be negative. This is illustrated best by her explanation of how she is such a good driver. Kirishima does so well in the role of Oto that she casts a huge shadow over the whole film, as is necessary, and there are also great performances from Park Yu-rim, stunning in her portrayal of a deaf-mute actress in the play, and Masaki Okada, as a young actor named Kôji Takatsuki, a man who also had an intimate connection with Oto.
Every character here, from those front and centre to those given just the briefest moment, feels well-rounded and fully-realised. Hamaguchi has spent years studying the human condition, with love looked at through various lenses, and Drive My Car, thanks to the marriage of the material and the superb cast, easily ranks as one of his best, although Asako I & II might just edge ahead of it. Well worth seeing, although the lengthy runtime will prove too much for some, especially while pieces are being moved in place throughout the first half.
9/10
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