Rating: Unrated (or TV-MA on HBO Max)
Runtime: 2 hours, 59 minutes
Director: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Quick Impressions:
One day when pandemics are a thing of the past, I’m going to figure out a way to go to Cannes, so I don’t always end up watching films like this at the last minute on HBO Max (which apparently defaults to captions off, by the way, even for foreign films). I suppose I could start smaller and actually go to SXSW. Austin Rogers will be there this year.
Going by word of mouth and Oscar buzz, I’ve been wanting to see Drive My Car for a long time, and when it got nominated for Best Picture, I knew I had to see it soon. The thing is, it’s three hours long, and when I first checked, it was only playing on the other side of Austin. My husband and I can’t really take four to five hours to watch a movie (away from home, without the kids) on a weeknight.
We were planning to watch it on HBO Max together this weekend, but if we don’t take my son to get a haircut Saturday, he’ll look like Cousin It by Monday. Half his face is already hidden by his hair. I don’t understand how he can see out of his left eye, honestly. He’ll lose depth perception if we don’t consult a barber soon! I had visions of us hurriedly trying to finish watching this movie as all the barber shops close down, one by one. I don’t want that to happen! Plus, we’ve got to watch West Side Story this weekend. My husband still hasn’t seen it!
At first, I felt a bit guilty about watching Drive My Car by myself, but now I’m thinking I’ll need to watch it again anyway. In the meantime, I may reread Uncle Vanya. (I say that, but I’m already in the middle of reading twenty books!) (By the time I got to the end of this movie, I’d taken in many lines of Chekhov’s dialogue in multiple languages, but I’d like to start from the beginning and read to the end in English.) (Even better, I’d love to get my hands on a copy of Yûsuke’s wife’s voice recordings. Then I could listen to those in Japanese and read the Uncle Vanya part to myself in English.) (Perhaps that’s needlessly complicated, but doesn’t it sound fun?)
One thing I will do for sure is keep my eye out for some sort of Chehkov’s gun in the early scenes of the movie. I’m sure there’s some plot element that serves that function. (I guess there’s the car. The car goes off in the end, but that’s kind of dumb, and I’m not sure that meaning of “goes off in the end” would work in Russian or Japanese, so I’m pretty sure the car is a red herring. (It’s actually a red Saab. It has the coolest body style. I didn’t think they made cars like that anymore, but it is supposed to be fifteen years old.) At any rate, I’m sure there’s some kind of Chekhov’s gun I need to be watching for—something beyond the literal gun in the play-within-a-play.)
The Good:
Drive My Car is three hours long, but so much material is packed into the film that I don’t see how it could be any shorter, especially because it pointedly makes times for silences and gaps within the rhythm of the story.
The narrative structure of this film is quite interesting! The long prologue sure took me by surprise. And I thought The Departed takes a long time to get to the opening credits! This movie’s prologue is over forty minutes long! Watching, I thought, “Oh, we’re doing a major time jump right now! That was so much significant material that’s probably going to be driving—ha ha—this character’s story going forward!” Usually backstory that significant that goes on for that long would be told in a series of flashbacks or withheld until closer to a film’s conclusion.
About forty-one minutes in, as words started appearing on the sides of the screen, I suddenly realized, “Wait a minute! Is this the opening credits?” (I know that’s very dumb of me, but I had been really intently trying to A) figure out where he was driving (i.e. what the road to Hiroshima looks like), and B) remember the plot of Uncle Vanya which I have not read since I was in high school. (In fact, I was also trying to figure out, “Why in world did I read Uncle Vanya in high school?” The thing is, I’m sure I never read it in an English class because I remember what we did read. I don’t remember reading it in drama class either, but who else would have assigned it? Thanks to sleep deprivation, I was already pretty out of it in pre-Cal. For all I know, the teacher could have said, “We’ve learned all trigonometry can tell us about flagpole height, so today we’ll be reading Uncle Vanya.”) Maybe we did read it in my ninth grade drama class. I just remembered that we watched Tartuffe and part of the movie Hedda. In any event, I need to read it again. I think I have a copy somewhere upstairs. As good as this movie is, I’m sure it’s even better the more you’ve read and considered Uncle Vanya.
I should also reread Waiting for Godot. (You know what? We read that and No Exit in my ninth grade drama class. That probably is where I read Uncle Vanya). If you really want to get the most out of Drive My Car, pay attention to the plays performed within the movie. I’m sure it’s in conversation with them. Dialogue is really significant in this film (the idea of being in dialogue, I mean).
I love that Yûsuke is so dedicated to performing his plays in multiple languages simultaneously (with one character speaking one language, another another). This emphasizes something that has always fascinated me, the inability to understand another person fully even in conversation. (Yet the conversation is essential, the rhythm, the pauses, the feeling. You have to understand what people are trying to convey to you, even if you don’t have access to their inner truth and perspective.) The way Yûsuke does it, the idea seems to be creating a language barrier in order ultimately to break down barriers in communication by valuing feeling over words and linguistic structure. (I don’t know why I like it when he does it because when Gertrude Stein does similar stuff, it makes me want to kill her. It’s probably because he’s working with live actors, and they’re all so charming, especially the actress who performs in Korean sign language (which never means what I think it does).)
I did my junior thesis on Shakespeare’s Sonnets and focused particularly on Sonnet 138 in which the lovers lie to one another even (in fact, especially) when lying together in the sexual sense. (This is like an Early Modern prophecy presaging a central problem of modernity, that no one can truly understand each other or know anyone else or even communicate properly.) Being alone while literally inside someone else’s body (or with someone else inside yours) is profoundly problematic (although the lovers in Sonnet 138 seem to find doubly lying together more rewarding than lying alone (or so they tell themselves). Drive My Car circles these same concerns. We get dialogues in different languages, dialogues with the dead, paired characters who work in tandem, single characters who appear to be more than one person. I live for stuff like this, so I found the whole film deeply intriguing, and frankly, can’t wait to watch it again!
(If only I can find Uncle Vanya! I could swear I noticed a book of Chekhov plays earlier when I was searching the whole house for a different book that might contain an anecdote about Greta Garbo whose origin I’ve been trying to remember for days. But now I don’t see the Chekhov book! (I had to change rooms in the middle of this review, and I was also looking for a crazy hat for my son to wear to school.)
Leaving writing aside for a second (which I will have to do with Uncle Vanya since I can’t find it), I’ll add that Drive My Car also features other engaging elements. The cinematography is quite striking, and when there is music (which is not that often), it usually signals a shift in or intensifying of mood. The characters are rich and intriguing, and the performances are good, particularly Hidetoshi Nishijima as Yûsuke, Tôko Miura as the driver, and Masaki Okada as the young actor with whom Yûsuke has an intense, rather complicated history.
(It’s going to be very funny if I find that Chekhov book and for some random reason, the Greta Garbo anecdote is in there, in a preface or something.)
Best Scene, Part I:
I love the opening scene. Immediately after watching it, I paused the movie and wrote the following:
Watching, I thought, “How captivating! I hope this woman is a writer, describing some key scenario in a piece of fiction that she’s working on! Her story is more disturbing if it’s true.”
From the start, I knew I would like the film because 1) We’ve seen no sex but can tell the narrator is rising from a lover’s bed immediately. 2) She jumps into narration that is so captivating that we care about who the girl in the story is before we care about who the woman speaking is. 3) Why would anyone obsessive enough to transgress societal norms to the point of breaking into someone’s house pointedly exercise the restraint not to masturbate? This implies that 1) The person is capable of restraint but chose to break into the house. 2) The person feels that masturbation is the next thing to do under the circumstances, that someone without restraint would masturbate. 3) That perhaps the narrator thinks so, too. 4) That the narrator of this story wants to define her character by what she chooses not to do. 5) The narrator clearly wants the person in bed with her to ask why the character chooses not to masturbate. (I wondered, “As the movie progresses, are we going to get a plot developed through dialogue, some kind of ask-and-answer, give-and-take, dialectical back-and-forth that causes the story to advance?”)
This beginning was so promising I knew I would love the rest of the film. I kept thinking, “I wish I could understand Japanese and didn’t need the subtitles because I’d love to hear the original language.” Then I got to the next scene and thought, “My daughter will love this!” (not that she leaves tampons in people’s houses).
I mention that I wrote all that before watching the rest of the movie to highlight that A) This really is a gripping opening scene and B) It truly does help the viewer immediately conceive useful expectations for the film.
Best Scene, Part II:
We’re promised payoff in the first scene of the film, and, of course, it comes. Probably the most satisfying, compelling scene in the entire film comes much later in the movie when we hear the rest of the story originally told by Oto (Reika Kirishima) from another character.
Best Scenes Visually:
I find Yûsuke’s first ride with his driver so aesthetically pleasing (despite his discomfort) because it’s so lovely. (My exact thought was, “This looks just like Ponyo!” But I’m sure that’s at least partially because my older two kids have been obsessively talking about watching Ponyo every time he’s home from college. This has been going on for months, but we always get distracted and forget to watch Ponyo.) (And of course, a dumb part of me was thinking, “What if this is like Shakespeare in Love, and the driver has to perform the play?”)
(She definitely learns the part read by the voice on the tape.)
The décor in the audition/rehearsal room is certainly striking, too! (It looks like it was decorated in the late 1960s or 70s.) I like the way two readers play their scene against a mirror, so we can see each actor’s face. (A similar moment comes later, outside, when we see the actors’ faces, but the audience in the film sees their backs.)
In general, the cinematography intrigues me. In the scene where the young actor runs after Yûsuke after their awkward drink in the bar, there’s a very long moment when we’re just looking across the top of the car at nothing. Nothing is in the frame but the top of the car. Why? Is it because they’re having a conversation, and there’s a disconnect? Is it to show the one-sidedness of the conversation (that only one of them is trying to have a conversation at this point)? It’s a very long look at the top of the car and nothing else!
At another moment, someone drops out of the frame, and we don’t know why until we see another character several seconds (maybe more) later.
The (sort of limited) tour of Hiroshima is also fascinating visually. (Were those the sights he wanted to see?)
Best of all, I love the colors in the scene when they visit the driver’s house near the end of the film.
Favorite Line:
“Although I wanted to work again, my body refused to dance.” This really resonated with me as I heard it. I feel like this happens to me all the time. I think, “Now I’m going to do this,” and my brain says, “No, I don’t think we’ll be doing that at all. Surprise!” (Then my brain and body join forces against me.)
Best Action Sequence:
The Best Action sequence comes when there’s an unexpected visitor to the set. Not only do we get to see a great performance by Kôshi Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), but we also see a not completely unexpected outcome for his character, and the protagonist’s reaction to this. (Maybe that’s the Chekhov’s gun I want to find. We see early on that Kôshi has a certain characteristic/tendency. That’s not an object, but it certainly becomes relevant. And to juxtapose this outcome with the gun in the play-within-a-play is pretty brilliant.)
Craziest Line:
“More importantly, what shall we do about the play?” (This woman must not get invited to any parties. Everything she says is always, “No, there is no choice. Nothing can be done. Death and taxes.”) (This is why I think I need to read Waiting for Godot again. This character’s behavior is so oddly robotic. Maybe she’s just trying to be assertive and firm, but she always appears standing next to another character. They’re so conspicuously a pair that I can’t help but think something is important about that. (I’m sure you’re probably saying to yourself, “Now I don’t even have to watch Drive My Car after reading insightful, specific comments like that one!”)
The Negatives:
Drive My Car tackles an awful lot of stuff for one movie. To get to the end of this film, you have to watch Uncle Vanya millions of times in forty-five different languages and take a driving tour of Japan that involves many prolonged silences. The protagonist has such a tortured, complex backstory, but then he keeps encountering people with equally tortured, complex backstories. And I mean, they’re in Hiroshima! Even the setting has a tortured, complex backstory! (Then you get to know the protagonist better, and it turns out his backstory is even more tortured and complex than you thought it was originally.) To get the most out of this, you need to be familiar with Chekhov (especially Uncle Vanya) already. The film also makes me wish that I spoke Japanese and Korean (and lets me know that I cannot interpret Korean sign language just by guessing and definitely should not try) (though I love the way it sounds).
I can’t lie, though, the film is fascinating. I wish it were a little shorter because then I would watch it millions of times. (That moment of payoff when we hear the surprise ending of the story is awfully good. The film certainly does a good job of building suspense. And what a huge reveal from the character’s point of view!)
I do wish Drive My Car was not so long, but, at the same time, I realize that it needs to be so long to accommodate all the material that it has. I find that frustrating and unresolvable (well, frustrating because it’s unresolvable). (I’m also pretty mad that we have so many books in this house and yet I can never seem to find any of them.)
Overall:
If you follow the Oscars, then you have to watch Drive My Car. It’s nominated for Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Foreign Film, so you can’t just skip it, and trust me, you don’t want to. This is an excellent movie, a compelling and original story. (In fact, I just noticed that it’s based on a short story. Who adapted that story—me? I can’t tell you how often I try to shorten something, revise it, and end up making it forty-five pages longer!) This movie’s streaming now on HBO Max, so set aside three hours to watch it. (I know that’s a lot of hours, but they’ll be well spent!)