“Drive My Car,” Japanese, Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021. Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami.
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What would you do if you came home and by accident heard your partner making love to a stranger? And if they did not notice your presence? Would you intervene, stop them, and assault them? Or would you retain your composure and surreptitiously tiptoe out? Would you later confront your partner with their infidelity or say nothing?
This is the awful predicament facing Yusuke {played by actor Hidetoshi Nishijima} when he finds his wife Oto, {Reika Kirishima} in bed with another man. Yusuke decides not to confront his wife about all her affairs with other men and pretends not to know. The reason for his silence is that he very much loves his wife and is afraid confronting her about this might backfire and lead to his wife walking out on him.
Later, his wife dies from a stroke and Yusuke is left with many unanswered questions such as "Why did my wife feel the need have affairs with other men?” and also “What was it about me which drove her to do this?"
He lived almost 20 years of his life with his wife. He fails to get over the death of his wife and greatly misses her. The lingering pain of betrayal and death continues to haunt him. In a sense, the rest of the film is an attempt by the two main characters to come to terms with the death of their loved ones and affirm life despite deep anguish and intense suffering.
The film “Drive my Car” is loosely based on Murakami's short story from his anthology “Men without Women” {2014, London: Penguin Random House}. However, Ryusuke Hamaguchi's script is very different from the short story. The film lasts 3 hours and although it remains largely faithful to the main plot there are additional stories and the characters are given more depth.
An indication of the difference was given by Hamaguchi in an interview with Leonardo Goi. Hamaguchi points out "When I first wrote to Haruki Murakami to tell him what kind of adaption I was trying to make, one of the first things I emphasized was that I wouldn't be able to use the dialogues and exchanges as he wrote them. Because real life people, well, they don't talk like that."
The film is a deep philosophical and psychological film which explores guilt, grief, anger and the haunting tortured trauma of past events. It also explores the use of language as well as literature to heal the wounds of the past. This film pays homage to Anton Chekhov and Samuel Beckett. Therefore, this film will certainly appeal to those who adore those playwrights.
However, the film is not short of detractors. For instance, some say it is dull, too long—and even pretentious. I think that this criticism is too short-sighted and myopic. Yes, it may be that some scenes in the film don't work or sound convincing such as when the two characters who have attained rapport raise both their hands with cigarettes out of the car roof window to symbolize some kind of joint victory over their grief. Not all scenes “work,” but I don't think the film is pretentious. Of course people who find Chekhov boring won't be great fans of this film.
The main plot centers on the successful actor and theater director Yusuke who is due to direct a special multi-lingual play, Chekhov's “Uncle Vanya.” Each actor has to perform in their own language while the subtitles of all their languages are screened above in the background of the stage. What counts is not so much the words of the actors or their language but how they convey the emotions non-verbally in a subtle, sophisticated, and original way…
Yusuke believes that rather than language differences being a barrier they can be a challenge to understanding others in a different way. This goes against an old view of language where people claim that the key to understanding another culture is through the prism of language.
You can still understand a person even if you don't know their language. In other words, language doesn't determine being or at least wholly. Messages can in fact come through in a variety of ways.
In the film, two years after his wife' death, Yusuke is invited to stage a performance of Uncle Vanya. One of the actors which he has cast happens to be one of the men who slept with his wife. The actor is Takasuki {Masaki Okado}. Yusuke casts him as Uncle Vanya. This is unexpected because everyone assumed Yusuke would play him as he had in past performances. Part of the tension of the film comes from the antagonism between the two characters who perceive things in different ways especially in regard to relations with women.
As part of the contract, Yusuke can only work if he agrees to be driven by a female driver, a taciturn 23 year old Misaki {Toko Miura}. Yusuke would prefer to drive himself but is forced to grudgingly accept this agreement. Every day while on his way to the theater Yusuke listens to recorded cassettes of the past play Uncle Vanya. His wife's voice is also recorded in this….
So viewers hear a lot about the play Uncle Vanya, and how they interpret and connect it to their everyday lives.
Although this play was written over a century ago it still remains relevant and resonant in modern day Japan!
Gradually both the characters who share the car begin to reveal their past stories which they have never told to another person. Both find they are troubled by the past deaths of family members. Like the characters of a Chekhov play, both of them feel deeply troubled by their past. Misaki the driver tells how she hated her abusive mother and feels guilty at not saving her from a landslide will killed her. Both feel negligent and guilty about the death of family members. In one scene Misaki declares, "I killed my mother" and Yusuke answers, "I killed my wife."
This should not be taken literally but instead should be understood to mean that both actors harbor a great deal of pain and guilt. In this respect, there is one moving and poignant scene when Yusuke tells Misaki that "I didn't want to hear my inner voice...I want to see her. I want to scold her and tell her she betrayed me. I want to apologize that I did not speak to her because I was too weak. I want her to return and that she is alive and she is alone so I can speak to her. I want to see her but it is impossible. There is nothing I can do to get her to return."
One point which Hamaguchi seeks to convey in the film through the actor Takatsuki is how it is impossible to fully know someone just by looking at him or her. Each person is a mystery. You can live with someone for decades and never know their full character. Takatsuki states, "The proposition that we can look into another person's heart with perfect clarity strikes me as a fool's game." This is refreshing insight because some therapists claim you can read a person like a book by observing their non-verbal behavior.
For example, in Scotland some people state, "I sussed this person out..." meaning they now know everything about his or her character. In this regard I recently read Freud's “A Case of Hysteria” in which Freud makes the extravagant claim that 'Those that have eyes to see and ears to hear will soon convince themselves that mortals cannot hide any secret. If our lips are sealed we talk volubly with our fingertips; we betray ourselves through every pore” {2013, London: Oxford World's Classics, page 66}.
It sounds like a police interrogator who claims, "We know more about you than you know about yourself." But a person's character cannot be summed up in a few words. Therefore, we should not put people into boxes with our own preconceived notions.
Of course, Chekhov's play, Uncle Vanya is one of the main themes of the film. One character claims that" When we read the text of Chekhov, we don't just speak but the text itself speaks back to us." I have read numerous critics with their interpretations of Chekhov. Some of those interpretations sound self-righteous. Critics like to condemn the characters in his plays as passive, idle, too conservative and prone to idle chatter and hypocritical speeches. In other words, they are all words and no action. They are rendered impotent by some kind of paralysis or helplessness.
For instance, if you read the historian Orlando Figes' interpretation in his book “Natasha's Dance,” you'll hear one view where the laziness of the nobility is condemned in contrast to the hard working merchants. But the actor Yusuke is not so judgmental of the nobility. Some actors are surprised he is not playing any role and ask him why he is not playing Uncle Vanya. Yusuke explains that he finds Chekhov very frightening because "When you say his lines, he drags out the real you." In other words, when we read Chekhov we find he is holding up a mirror to all of us. It therefore does not make sense to declare, "Thank God I'm not as pathetic as a character of Chekhov's plays." Yusuke grasps this. And the words of Chekhov's play which are acted out in the film play a part in healing the trauma of the main characters.
Towards the end of the film we hear the words of Sonya who states, “What is to be done? We must go on living, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through a long, long chain of days and endless evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials fate sends us; we'll work for others, now and in old age, without ever knowing rest, and when the time comes, we shall die submissively; and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered, and we have wept, and have known bitterness, and God will pity us.... We will look back on our lives with a tenderness, with a smile…"
Perhaps those words inspire the characters to at least have the courage to live with their pain and continue with their lives…
It is when Yusuke is forced to take on the role of Uncle Vanya that he experiences an epiphany that allows him to come to terms with his past.
The film is worth watching for the acting alone. There is little doubt that Hidetoshi Nishijima has great stage presence and aptly conveys the brooding loneliness of Yusuke who successfully retains control of his emotions with great difficulty. He does not even have to utter one word to capture the audience.
I also think that Toko Miura as his taciturn driver is amazing. She is inscrutable in a spellbinding way! (Ironically, when chosen for the part, she had to learn how to drive from the start!)
The dialogue of the film is very sharp and thought-provoking. Perhaps you need to watch this film several times to get the full drift of the meaning. Many of the scenes of the film are shot beautifully and the scene where they are driving under an underground tunnel as a symbol of entering the other world and of some kind of transformation reminded me of a similar scene from Andrei Tarkovsky's film “Solaris” {1972}.
The director also uses the language of silence in a profound way especially when both Yusuke is being driven by Misaki. It is perhaps Misaki's reassuring and non-intrusive silence that allows Yusuke to confide in someone about his hidden thoughts for the first time.
As we can learn much from this film we should definitely make an effort to see it. You won't be disappointed!