Drive My Car is based on a short story by Haruki Murakami and stars Hidetoshi Nishijima as Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director who is happily married to Oto (Reika Kirishima), a screenwriter. But Oto dies unexpectedly, leaving behind a painful secret. Two years later, still reeling from the loss of his wife, Kafuku accepts an opportunity to direct a production at a theatre festival and drives his automobile to Hiroshima.
He meets Misaki (Toko Miura), a reserved lady who has been assigned to be his chauffeur. As they spend time together, Kafuku is confronted with the mystery of his wife, which had been nagging him for some time.
Drive My Car, which Ryusuke Hamaguchi co-wrote and directed, had its world debut in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021, where it won Best Screenplay. It had been nominated for four Academy Awards® and won Best International Feature Film; and three BAFTA Film Awards as Japan’s official submission (Director, Film Not in the English Language, and Adapted Screenplay).
The film’s subject matter initially appears mundane, yet it deftly explores the complex emotions of people wrestling with feelings of guilt over unresolved events.
Hamaguchi said he was inspired to make the film for three reasons: firstly, because of the characters of Kafuku and Misaki, who interact with each other mostly within the confines of a car. Reading Murakami’s short story, Hamaguchi was able to recollect private chats that happened in closed-off, moving spaces. It’s essentially nowhere, because it’s a moving space, and there are moments when that area helps us find pieces of ourselves that we’ve never shown anyone, or concepts that we couldn’t articulate previously, he explained.
Secondly, Hamaguchi said the acting would entail juggling several identities, which is a socially acceptable sort of insanity. It’s evident that doing it as a career is exhausting, and it can even lead to meltdowns. As people who have no option but to do it, and as individuals who act for a living, that insanity heals them, allowing them to continue living. For a long time, he’s been fascinated by this style of acting performed as a “means of survival.”
The last reason is the enigmatic nature of Oto’s lover, Takatsuki, and the way his “voice” is presented. Takatsuki slept with Oto before she died, according to Kafuku, and he describes him as “not an exceptionally talented actor.” Takatsuki, on the other hand, reveals Kafuku’s blind spot one day. “If we hope to truly see another person, we must begin by looking within ourselves,” he says, and the reason this fairly stereotypical comment devastates Kafuku is that he intuitively senses that it’s a “truth” that he could never have reached on his own – “His words were clear and charged with conviction. That’s for sure, he wasn’t acting,” said Hamaguchi.
“I recognize voices like these. I’ve heard them in person before. Furthermore, once you heard a voice like that, you couldn’t be the same again and are compelled to respond to whatever that voice is demanding. The short story didn’t go on to explain what happened next, leaving the impression that Kafuku’s response was yet to be discovered,” Hamaguchi added.
When he started working on the film, Hamaguchi wanted to allow these inquiries and replies to evolve as a chain of “voices” holding truth, as described in the narrative, to arrive at Kafuku’s ultimate response. It’s also about giving the audience an experience that allows them to instinctively perceive the truth via the fiction that is acting on a constant basis.
The verdict
Drive My Car is a must-see film, as it does not have a clear ending and instead leaves it to the audience to decide how it ends. However, a few re-watches might be needed to fully understand certain plot elements.
Watch the trailer here: [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyDSxD51WRE[/embedyt]
Drive My Car will be available on Mubi starting April 1st
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