Drive My Car: A Review
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. A flawed but technically solid arthouse venture that is undermined by some grandiosely absurd plot points. Those with conventional tastes should stay away from this three-hour existential meditation, but those who love the arthouse should find something to like about this movie.
In recent years, no doubt in an effort to bolster their diversity bona fides, the Academy Awards have nominated Asian films or Asian-themed films for the Best Picture Award, with mixed results.
It started with Parasite, the brilliant 2019 Korean film from director Bon Joon-ho which was nominated for six Oscars and miraculously beat out stiff competition to win Best Picture, Best International Feature Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
In 2020, the middling Minari, which was directed by Korean-American Lee Isaac Chung and featured a Korean cast and language, was elevated by pandering critics and rose to get six Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Score, with its only win being Youn Yuh-jung for Best Supporting Actress.
This year, Drive My Car, a Japanese film directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, has become the critical darling and garnered a Best Picture, Best International Film, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nominations.
Drive My Car, which is currently available to stream on HBO Max and Amazon, is neither the masterpiece that was Parasite, nor the arthouse fool’s gold that was Minari. It’s somewhere in the middle. It’s not great, but it’s also not terrible, which in the context of the atrocity that is cinema in 2021, means it’s worthy of a Best Picture Oscar nomination, as mediocrity is now magnificence.
The film is best described as an existential relationship drama that uses Anton Chekhov’s play ‘Uncle Vanya’ as its emotional anchor/blueprint/spirit animal as it tells the story of Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a theatre actor and director in Japan who ponders life, death and everything in between.
Kafuku has played Uncle Vanya extensively and has unlocked the inner workings and rhythms of Chekhov’s masterpiece. As he drives around Japan in his red SAAB, he listens to a recording of his wife speaking all of the lines of the play, except Vanya’s – which Kafuku recites with lifeless precision.
In order to protect the cinematic experience of watching Drive My Car, I will avoid all spoilers – no matter how big or small. But I will say this, one of the film’s great weaknesses is its insistence on grandiosely absurd plot points to propel the story. There are three I am thinking of and when you see them, you’ll know what I’m talking about. These three events/revelations are so theatrically contrived that they undermine the potential power of the film.
That said, the movie does have a lot going for it. Namely, it’s exquisitely crafted, particularly by cinematographer Hidetoshi Shinokiya. For example, there is one shot of Kafuku and his driver Misaki (Toko Miuri) down at a waterfront area that is so gloriously composed it nearly made my heart explode with its artistry.
In another scene, which is crucial to the story, Hamaguchi and Shinokiya place the camera between two people as they have a conversation in the back seat of a moving car, so there’s no over-the-shoulder cuts, or two shots, instead the viewer is placed deep inside the conversation and the actors actually seem to be talking directly to the camera. This approach in this scene – and only in this scene, is brilliant as it imposes an intimacy on the conversation that is deliriously compelling and greatly elevates the drama.
The film’s use of sound and silence is equally impressive, as it subtly weaves a technically masterful spell upon the viewer. In one critical sequence near the end of the film, a monologue is given in silence, and it is the most deeply moving moment in the entire movie. There’s another moment when silence is thrust upon the viewer so suddenly that I wondered if I had accidentally hit the mute button on my remote control. That sound design could use silence to shake a viewer in this way is an impressive feat.
Drive My Car is unquestionably an arthouse film in style and substance, and it’s a deliberately, if not languidly, paced three hours. For example, the opening act of the film, which could be considered the prelude, takes 45 minutes. So, 45 minutes into the movie, the opening-credits role. The following 2 hours and 15 minutes also takes its time but to Hamaguchi’s credit, never flounders.
The cast are, if not spectacular, then at least engaging and likeable. Nishijima’s Kafuku is a perplexing character who makes some seemingly strange choices, but he never loses your attention, which is no small feat considering he’s in nearly every shot of the film.
The rest of the cast are not particularly spectacular, but they also aren’t bad.
The one thing I truly loved about Drive My Car is that after it ended, I kept thinking about it. I kept ruminating and pondering its philosophical and artistic musings. I also kept thinking about Chekhov – one of my all-time favorite writers not just for his plays but for his phenomenal short stories.
Like Kafuku in Drive My Car, I too have discovered profound personal and philosophical insights in the works of Chekhov (as well as in Shakespeare), which have changed my life.
Drive My Car is not the cinematic equivalent of a Chekhov play or short story, but that’s a high bar to measure it against. It’s also not on the same level as the masterpiece that is Parasite, but that again is an unfair comparison.
Instead, Drive My Car is a flawed (maybe even very flawed), but ultimately compelling, technically well-made, solid arthouse film. If your tastes run the more conventional, this movie is most definitely not for you. But if you enjoy the arthouse and have a particular love of Chekhov and ‘Uncle Vanya’, then watching Drive My Car will be three hours well-spent.
©2022