Japan’s Oscar-nominated film “Drive My Car” is a journey through grief, loss and art
SEOUL — This week was a significant one for Japanese cinema. Drive My Car, a film about a car accident, became the first movie to be nominated at the Academy Awards for best picture. It will be the second foreign-language movie to receive this honor if it wins; Parasite was directed by Bong Joon-ho in South Korea in 2020.
Drive My Car, adapted from Haruki Murakami’s 2014 short story, was nominated for best director, best international film, and best adapted screenplay.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who directs the film, plays some of Murakami’s most iconic themes, including guilt, loss, and the interplay between art and life. Hamaguchi is the Japanese director who has been nominated for the first time since 1986’s Akira Kurosawa. Drive My Car tells the story of Yusuke Kafuku, a theater actor and director, and Oto, his screenwriter wife, who attempt to heal from the loss of their child. They tell stories that they then retell after and during sex.
Kafuku’s calm exterior hides his inner pain. It is a shock to him that Oto had been sharing his bed with a group of young actors. She doesn’t know he does.
Hidetoshi Nishijima, actor who plays Kafuku says that his character is someone who understands and loves his wife better than anyone. You think you know each other better than anyone and that you trust each other more. There is still a part of your heart you can’t reach or understand. Reika Kirishima plays “to” and suggests that she is ready to confess to her infidelity. However, she dies before she can. The action then moves forward two years and the main story begins.
The characters in the film struggle with guilt and loss.
Drive My Car is a three-hour long movie that is complex and layered. It is based on a short story Hamaguchi claims is “a big story” of which only a few parts are shown. Other parts are kept hidden. He said that his task was to uncover the hidden parts, similar to excavating ruins.
“Drive My Car” may be the most enjoyable ride of the year.
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“Drive My Car” may be the most enjoyable ride of the year.
Hamaguchi is particularly interested in the emotions of his characters. The camera can film the soul of a person and has X-ray eyes. He says, “I never believed it.” He began to see the film differently as he worked on it, and hopes that the film’s viewers will do the same.
Kafuku acts out his grief after Oto’s passing. Kafuku is the leading role in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, a play about a frustrated caretaker on a Russian country estate.
Kafuku said in the film that Chekhov is “terrible” because “when you speak his lines, it drags you out of your true self.”
He experiences a panic attack and switches from acting to direct.
Kafuku’s car, a red, two-door Saab sedan, is his mobile stage. It also serves as a shrine for his wife. Kafuku can practice his lines in the car while he travels to the theater, or glides along expressways and then makes long road trips.
A Hiroshima theater offers him a residency as a director for Uncle Vanya. However, he must have a driver to drive the show since he is suffering from glaucoma. Misaki is a young woman driver who he has difficulty giving the keys to.
Toko Miura plays Misaki. She says underneath her tough exterior lies an honest, empathetic character.
“She claims she can sense when people lie. Miura believes that this means she is able to understand other people’s emotions. “In many ways, she was like me.”
Kafuku meets Misaki in the Saab and they begin to open up to one another. They share feelings of guilt and loss. Kafuku later notices that Misaki’s driving style is so fluid, he doesn’t feel like he’s even in a car.
Kafuku plays Hiroshima as an inexperienced young actor who is also his wife’s ex-love. Nishijima suggests that Kafuku’s character casts the young actor to get revenge. He says, “I believe he gave the part to the actor outof a feeling that was rather dark and unclear and deep.” “As I was performing this scene, I felt an indescribable sensation.”
The younger man and the husband who has lost his wife begin to talk to one another about their relationship with Oto. Both reveal aspects of Oto that they had never seen before.
Murakami’s universality is reflected in the multilingual play found within the movie.
Kafuku’s multilingual Uncle Vanya has a cast of international actors that deliver their lines in their native languages.
This is just one way Hamaguchi brings Murakami’s writing to life, according to Matthew Strecher, a professor of modern Japanese literature at Sophia University, Tokyo.
Strecher states that Murakami “does this through his writing style, writing an incredibly translatable Japanese.” He does this by placing his stories where they could be anywhere.
As South Korean and Taiwanese actresses rehearse dialogue from Uncle Vanya’s, Kafuku says to them: Stop, something very important has just happened.
Acting transcends the play and appears as a conversation between two people, rather than actors delivering lines. Kafuku tells the actors then to bring the conversation to the audience.
Strecher said, “That was one of the many really important moments in this movie.” “That was the moment that the barrier between reality & fiction fell apart, which is something that’s always occurring.”
This can lead to blurred distinctions between audience and actor, making it seem as though they are speaking directly to you rather than in a play.
Strecher says, “But I think that it’s true with all Murakami-writing.” “You read the story, then you rewrite it in your own style. Then you realize that the story is also about you. All of his stories are about stuff we deal with.”
Drive My Car’s characters eventually find some relief and catharsis from their shared feelings of loss. There are no easy solutions to life’s problems. Strecher concludes that all people can do is continue living their lives as best as they can, just like Uncle Vanya’s characters.
Perhaps that is why Drive My Car ends in ambiguity, misaki’s face displaying a slight smile.
