It is best to go into the 2021 Academy Award-winning film Drive My Car knowing nothing about it and let the story unfold before your eyes without any prior knowledge of where it is going to go. It is one of those films that has at least a half dozen themes that are at play, and every single one of them can merit its own separate viewing. It is based on a short story of the same name by Japanese author Haruki Murakami from his collection of stories, Men Without Women, and while it does expand upon the story, it has so much information available to mine that it enriches the film and justifies just how long it actually is. This is a three-hour movie, but it justifies that length and never feels like it needs to hurry up and get to the point.
The original short story feels like a blueprint for the film, touching on a central drama that never lingers too long on any of the details. Haruki Murakami’s writing style is best described as minimalist, as he gives us just enough information to form a narrative without delving further into details that we don’t absolutely need. The story, as it is on the page, is a series of conversations that deal with the main character, Yūsuke Kafuku’s, feelings about his late wife and her various inter-marital affairs as well as a quasi-friendly relationship that develops between him and her lover. We get some details about the marriage as well as the conflict in Yūsuke’s mind over why his wife felt she needed to seek physical love from other men. It’s a story without any real answers, as any she may have been able to provide were lost when she dies from cancer.
The film adaptation takes this basic outline and expands on it in a way that feels organic and poignant. We see early on that Yūsuke’s (Hidetoshi Nishijima) marriage to his wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima), is one of love and a deep intimacy. They have a great passion for each other, and some of her best ideas for scripts come from the stories she relays to him right after making love. He is an actor and theater director, and early on, he has to fly out for his work. After he arrives at the airport, he is informed that the trip has been delayed by a few days, so he returns home only to discover Oto is in bed with another man. Neither saw him as he came into the house, so he sneaks back out and says nothing to her of what he saw. Later, he will confess that he knew she often had these affairs but never confronted her for fear of ending the life they had built together. One day on his way out the door to work, she stops him and tells him that when he comes home that evening, she has something she needs to talk to him about. Afraid of what he believes that is, he stays out late, coming home well into the evening only to find her collapsed on the floor from a cerebral hemorrhage. He calls for an ambulance but she never awakens, dying a few days later.
A couple of years later, Yūsuke is offered a residency in Hiroshima to direct a multilingual production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. He accepts but is caught off guard when informed that the theater festival requires him to be chauffeured everywhere during the residency because a previous residence had a serious accident and now the insurance insists on a chauffeur. Yūsuke is initially upset over this condition as he is a creature of habit, which includes taking long drives to and from work while listening to a tape his wife recorded of the play, absent the dialogue of the lead character, which he recites back to the tape. He has no choice in the matter and has to accept the chauffeur as part of the job, though. This driver turns out to be Misaki Watari (Tōko Miura), a mid-twenties young woman who learned how to drive perfectly from an abusive mother who made her drive her back and forth to work. The mother would sleep during the long commute and would beat Misaki if she were awakened during any part of the drive. Faced with that threat, Misaki learned how to drive smoothly over even the roughest of surfaces. Yūsuke eventually grows to appreciate this young woman and accepts her services as his driver.
Meanwhile, Yūsuke gets busy casting Uncle Vanya. The play is set to be a multilingual production complete with overhead subtitles in multiple languages for a diverse audience. He hires Japanese, Korean, and Chinese actors for the main roles alongside an unusual choice: a woman who is unable to speak and uses Korean sign language to communicate. Among this group of actors, he hires Kōji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), a young television actor with a hot temper who is down on his luck after a scandal involving an underage girl. Kōji also happens to be the man Yūsuke saw with his wife the evening he caught her cheating on him. The two will, over the course of the film, spend several evenings together as they bond over drinks and their mutual love for the same woman. Yūsuke doesn’t let on that he is aware of the affair, but Kōji eventually admits without outright saying so when he relates a story Oto had started telling Yūsuke during sex, a story she had never finished telling him. Kōji knows the rest of this story and relays it to Yūsuke. Later, Kōji gets arrested for assaulting someone for taking his picture without permission, beating him so badly that he later dies in the hospital. Yūsuke is forced to decide between scrapping the play or stepping in to the now-vacated role.
It’s a brave decision to leave so many questions unanswered in this story. That can run the risk of leaving audiences unsatisfied if it is done incorrectly. Life doesn’t always give us all the answers, though, and often, especially if a loved one dies suddenly, there can be questions left behind with no way of getting those answers. We never really learn why Oto cheats on Yūsuke. What is in her makeup that drives her into the arms of other men? We know that she is still very much in love with her husband; that much is made clear from the very first scene. We can assume that what she wanted to speak to Yūsuke about the night she collapsed has to do with that, but we never know for sure. Neither will Yūsuke, who is haunted by the belief that if he had had the courage to come home on time, he may have been able to save her life.
He finds a kindred spirit in Misake, who also has a personal demon she is dealing with. She bares a scar on her cheek as a reminder of a time, not too far in the past, when she could have saved her mother’s life but chose not to. She confesses to Yūsuke that she believes she killed her mother, and he responds back that he killed his wife. Together, they will make the long drive back to the place where her mother died and will try to come to terms with their own feelings of guilt and remorse. Yūsuke is accustomed to being alone in life, keeping most people at a distance. Eventually, he grows to trust in Misake, not just with his life as she drives him to and from his residency, but with his feelings of frustration and sorrow. We get the sense that, like him, she has kept a distance from people as well, and that opening up to him is equally difficult for her.
This is a dense movie with a lot of story to get through, yet it never feels like homework. There is a lot going on here, and it is both beautiful and sad to see it all play out. Yūsuke comes across like the stereotypical Japanese male, stoic and closed off, but there is a complexity beneath that surface that is fascinating to watch in action. When he first comes into his home and we can hear the affair going on in the other room, the expectation is that he will get upset and start yelling at them, perhaps kick her out of their home. But that is not what he does. Instead, he backs out of the house and books a hotel, telling her over video chat that he made his flight. When he returns, he says nothing about what he saw and goes on with his life as if nothing happened. We only learn later in the film that he knew she was having affairs and that this encounter we witnessed was not the first time he was aware she was unfaithful. Love is a complicated emotion, and no film will be able to fully portray its power, but this film does come close.
At three hours long, this film may seem daunting to some who have not yet taken the time to see it for themselves. One needn’t worry, though. This film feels a lot shorter than it actually is. So much happens in the span of that three hours that it really couldn’t have been trimmed down any more than it already is. This is a rare example of a film that surpasses what was written in the original short story and gives us a film filled to the brim with complex emotional stakes and some very real feelings of emotional turmoil. It simply needs to be seen to be appreciated. It was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award as well as the Best International Feature Film, winning the latter award. It could have easily won both. This film is quite literally a modern masterpiece.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Teruhisa Yamamoto
Best Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Best Adapted Screenplay: Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe
Best International Feature Film: Japan (won)
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Release Date: August 20, 2021
Running Time: 180 Minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tōko Miura, Reika Kirishima, Park Yu-rim, Jin Dae-yeon, Sonia Yuan, Ahn Hwitae, Perry Dizon, Satoko Abe, and Masaki Okada
Directed By: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
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