Drive My Car
Doraibu mai kā

Japanese writer/director Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Happy Hour, Asako I & II, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy) adapts Haruki Murakami's short story Drive My Car, from Murakami's 2014 collection Men Without Women, transforming it into a sublime minimalist epic. The engrossing grief/loss character study follows Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) who, two years after his wife's unexpected death, is invited to direct a production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. 

A former actor, Kafuku has an unusual and exacting style of directing in which he casts actors from different nationalities and has them recite their text in their native language in a precisely timed manner. He has developed Glaucoma and, much to his chagrin, the festival mandates that a chauffeur drive him at all times. He fears not being alone in his car will interfere with his process of preparing for each day of work on the play. But the driver, a stoic young woman named Misaki Watari (Toko Miura), turns out to be an ideal escort. Her nearly silent presence helps Kafuku navigate the regrets and haunting questions surrounding his wife’s death.

Drive My Car takes the long route to get to its destination. Though based on a short story, the film’s measured pace and attention to subtle, even mundane details stretches the running time out to three hours. Yet there is never a moment where we feel adrift. Hamaguchi shepherds viewers through his story with the same effortless skill Watari pilots Kafuku’s vintage red Saab through the streets and environs of Hiroshima.

Much of the movie takes place within the confines of the car, which is reminiscent of the work by Abbas Kiarostami. Like the late Iranian master, Hamaguchi understands how a car can be a meditative space as well as a uniquely intimate place for one-to-one conversation. But unlike many Kiarostami pictures, the car doesn’t take over the movie. Kafuku interacts with many interesting characters over the course of directing his theater production, as well as before he makes the trip to Hiroshima. He is a man of few words, but each word he utters feels specifically chosen and unusually direct. Nevertheless, his methods often baffle the people he works with. Hamaguchi’s writing and directing style are similarly precise, though seemingly less straightforward. Yet as viewers, we always feel that we are in the hands of a skilled storyteller.  The more minutes and hours we spend with Kafuku and Watari, the more intrigued we are with what’s going on inside their minds and what mysteries from the past they might express in time.