“Drive My Car” Japanese Theatrical Poster
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Cast: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Reika Kirishima, Park Yu-rim, Jin Dae-yeon, Sonia Yuan, Ahn Hwitae, Perry Dizon, Satoko Abe, Masaki Okada
Running Time: 179 min.
By Paul Bramhall
It’s perhaps a testament to how much inspiration Japanese author Haruki Murakami is capable of instilling in those who read his work, when you consider that Drive My Car is the second of his short stores in recent years to be adapted into an epic piece of cinema. Korean director Lee Chang-dong adapted the short story Barn Burning from The Elephant Vanishes omnibus into 2018’s Burning, clocking in at 2 & ½ hours, and in 2021 Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s adapted the short story Drive My Car from the omnibus Men Without Women. Despite the source material being less than 40 pages, transferred to screen Drive My Car transforms into a 3-hour meditation on loss, identity, and what it means to come to terms with a past that can never be fully understood.
Only the 2nd Japanese movie to win the Best International Picture Academy Award after Departures in 2008, Hamaguchi plays with the narrative structure of Murakami’s original work in a way which allows it to connect with audiences more coherently, and promises a richer experience on repeated viewings. Hidetoshi Nishijima (Casshern, Dolls) and Reika Kirishima (Heaven’s Door, Norwegian Wood) are a happily married couple involved in the arts, with Nishijima a successful stage actor and director, and Kirishima a script writer. Nishijima is invited to Vladivostok as a judge at a festival, however when his flight is delayed by a day due to bad weather he returns home, only to find his wife mid-coitus with one of the young actors who’s a part of the drama series she’s penned.
Sneaking back out before he’s seen, Nishijima carries on like nothing happened, until one day Kirishima tells him they should chat when he returns home from work that day. The chat never happens though, and instead he returns home to find Kirishima dead from a sudden brain haemorrhage. I could say all of this happens as a pre-credits sequence, which is true, however it’s also true to say that the opening credits don’t appear onscreen until the 40-minute mark. When we resume 2 years have passed, and Nishijima accepts the offer to direct a theatre production of Russian playwright Anton Chekov’s Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. Driving there in his immaculate red Saab 900, things don’t go to plan when he’s told he has to have a designated driver during his time on the production, and despite his protests, ultimately resigns himself to being chauffeured around by a young woman, played by Tôko Miura (Romance Doll, Organ).
While the story itself is a simple one on the surface, it’s the depth of what’s going on just beneath that provides Drive My Car’s most meaningful moments. Nishijima’s red Saab is more than just an out-of-date car, it’s his fortress of solitude and connection to the past. To help him rehearse his lines Kirishima would record herself as the other characters on cassette tapes, leaving gaps for Nishijima to recite his own from behind the wheel, and in the time since she’s past he continues to listen to her voice whenever he’s driving. Now forced to share the space for the first time and cede control of the wheel to someone else, what initially begins as his same routine only with company, gradually gives way to an opportunity for interaction with the living rather than the dead.
Drive My Car is arguably the most mature piece of filmmaking to date from Hamaguchi, a director who’s feature length debut was a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris in 2007. After 2018’s decidedly middling Asako I & II, 2021 seems to be the year when Hamaguchi really found his groove, with Drive My Car being one of two movies he’d release, the other being the anthology piece Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. Here he handles complex themes with a delicate hand, using the whole process of Nishijima’s involvement in Uncle Vanya, from casting through to the rehearsals, to subtly weave into the narrative the question of how far acting someone else’s words can allow us to understand ourselves, and in turn human nature.
Human nature and its many folies has been a recurring theme in much of Hamaguchi’s work, and here it’s once more at the forefront, with feelings of regret and guilt kept simmering just off the edges of the screen for much of the runtime. As if to comment on the limitation of language as a form of communication, Nisihjima casts his play drawing from a variety of nationalities, and has each of them speak their native tongue during the performance itself. As well as Japanese, we also get Mandarin, Korean, Tagalog, and sign language in the mix, with the actors coming to trust both themselves and each other to know when it’s their line. The expectations that Nishijima impresses upon his performers to give themselves over to the text acts as a mirror to his own life, in which he’s unwilling to give himself over to the present, and the progression of the performance and Nishijima’s own realisations quietly play out in parallel.
Key to everything is the role of Tôko Miura as Nishijima’s driver. What begins as a passive presence, limited to asking Nishijima if he’d like to play the cassette, and seen waiting for him when he finishes at the theatre each day, gradually becomes one that acts as a trigger for transformation in them both. Each silently carries burdens from their past that come to the surface through conversations had as driver and passenger, and Hamaguchi take the bold move to completely refrain from any kind of flashback scenes, instead simply trusting in the power of the actors communicating to convey everything. The stillness of these scenes works beautifully, allowing the audience to feel how their interactions change the dynamic of their surroundings. What was once an old car filled with voices of the past, now becomes a place of mutual confidentiality where secrets can be shared, and journeys started.
Indeed it’s a cliché to say that sometimes it’s not so much about the destination as it is the journey to get there, however it’s one that could well be applied to Drive My Car. As the movies anchor Nishijima is effective, an actor who has almost made a whole career out of playing characters with an understated calmness. Often it’s put to good use, such as in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Creepy, but occasionally it backfires like in Mozu: The Movie, where he came across as dull and listless. Here his quiet assertiveness is used well, however during the climactic scene in Hokkaido his performance doesn’t quite deliver the emotional heft the scene calls for, and as a result the moment of release it’s intended to convey doesn’t quite hit the mark.
Similarly, if any criticism could be said of Drive My Car, it’s the way some characters have their respective arcs concluded. One of the main actors in Nishijima’s play, played by Masaki Okada (Confessions, Rage), is given a backstory that makes some of the other characters decisions towards him less than believable, and his fate doesn’t quite resonate, feeling more like a plot mechanism rather than a character choice. However ultimately these are small gripes, and Hamaguchi displays a skilled hand to keep the entire 3 hours never less than engaging through to the final scene, of which the absence of a certain character tells us all that we need to know.
Equal parts minimalist and contemplative, perhaps Hamaguchi’s greatest triumph with Drive My Car is making 3 hours float by in what feels like a few minutes. He has an ability to draw you into the characters world without even being aware of it, presenting a world where there are no easy truths, but one where solace is to be found in those around us – whether that be from a husband, a wife, a lover, or even a driver. Slow but never deliberately so, emotional while never resorting to histrionics, and thoughtful without ever being pretentious, Drive My Car is a rewarding ride for those willing to take it.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8.5/10
