FILM
Drive My Car Worth the Wait
Japanese fi lmmaker adapts Haruki Murakami’s story
BY STEVE ERICKSON
A heavy diet of movies will
prove the subjectivity of
time. An inept 10-minute
short can feel like
endless torture to sit through. Every
fi lm has its own rhythm. Good
fi lms follow them, great fi lms create
complex new ones. Japanese director
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive
My Car” may not quite land in the
latter category, but it continues his
interest in playing around with
structure and duration. His other
2021 release, “Wheel of Fortune
and Fantasy,” which had a run at
Film Forum in October, consisted
of three unrelated shorts. “Drive
My Car” winds up in a more familiar
place than one might expect,
but it takes a great deal of time
getting there.
Adapted from a 50-page Haruki
Murakami story, “Drive My Car”
opens with a short section about
the life of theater actor Yusuke Kafuku
(Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his
wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), who is
a screenwriter. Their marriage has
been troubled by her adultery, but
at present it’s fairly peaceful. He
learns that he suffers from glaucoma
and may gradually lose his
sight, while she suddenly dies. A
“two years later” title appears onscreen,
the credits roll, and we arrive
at the heart of “Drive My Car.”
Yusuke is now staging a production
of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,”
featuring a woman who speaks
in Korean sign language as well
as a celebrity actor, Koji (Masaki
Okada). Due to the deterioration
of his vision, he’s driven around by
a chauffeur, Misaki (Toko Miura).
The fi lm slowly arrives at a confrontation
with the deaths in the
past and present of Yuskuke, Koji
and Misaki’s lives.
Hamaguchi’s breakthrough was
the fi ve-hour, 15-minute “Happy
Hour,” and he originally planned
for “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy”
to contain seven shorts. In a world
where the latest MCU blockbuster
runs 157 minutes, the three-hour
length of “Drive My Car” isn’t so
unusual, but the fi lm’s structure
Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura in “Drive My Car.”
Sonia Yuan and Park Yurim in “Drive My Car.”
has been bent. It includes a great
deal of footage of the casting, rehearsal,
and performance of “Uncle
Vanya” (as well as a brief glimpse
of Yusuke performing in “Waiting
for Godot.”) Most directors would
completely elide this, treating it as
SIDESHOW/JANUS FILMS
SIDESHOW/JANUS FILMS
dead space. But Hamaguchi is interested
both in the process of art
developing and the offstage drama
that develops when strangers have
to spend much of their time living
and working together.
“Drive My Car” does not really
come together until its fi nal hour,
but it accumulates an enormous
charge by that point. It’s full of long
shots of the highway, with many
of its scenes taking place in cars.
It parallels the tension between
Yusuke and Oto, in its fi rst half
hour, with the platonic interactions
that occur when Misaki drives Koji
around. But there’s more than
mere narrative buildup at work.
The fi lm creates a mysterious aura
around the road. Following Oto’s
death, Yusuke seems to exist in
a space between worlds, not quite
ready to enter the next stage of his
life. When he rides in the car, the
scenes last so long that they start
to feel like real time. It’s no accident
that the car is so central to
the fi lm’s title.
And the fact that it will be a literal
stage means that Hamaguchi
gets to use “Uncle Vanya” much
like the Beastie Boys or De La
Soul sampled snippets of ‘70s pop
songs to speak for them. An audio
jump scare from the play leads to
a reckoning with real-life violence.
Yusuke’s moods are expressed
through the play. These interpolations
lend weight to the fi lm’s scenario.
Thanks to the fi lm’s patience,
its slow-burn approach works
beautifully. Even “Wheel of Fortune
and Fantasy” had a cumulative
impact, with its third short
leaning towards a more optimistic
approach. Hamaugchi avoids the
clichés that come with backstage
drama. “Drive My Car” weaves
together several storylines into
an examination of the long-term
effects of grief. (The Hiroshima
setting lurks behind all this, although
there are no references to
the city’s nuclear bombing by the
US) Even after all the characters’
emotions have been exposed, it
retains an enigmatic air. The car
remains ready to drive through
more passageways.
DRIVE MY CAR | Directed by
Ryusuke Hamaguchi | Sideshow/
Janus Films | In Japanese with
English subtitles | Opened Nov.
24th at Film Forum and Film at Lincoln
Center
NOVEMBER 25 - DECEMBER 1, 2 22 021 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
