Drive my car ★★★ ½
DRAMA (2021)
Directed by: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Interpretations: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura

The rhythms are slow and the silence is as important as the words, and the camerawork remains unpretentious, punctuated by some almost poetic moments.

Japan’s Ryusuke Hamaguchi won last year’s Oscars – and a slew of other awards – with a film that demands a lot from the viewer, but is able to repay them many times over if they pay attention to it. Yusuke, a playwright who recently tragically lost his partner, accepts an invitation to travel to the city of Hiroshima to stage his own version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Along the way, he will learn to live with both his chosen motley troupe of actors and the introverted young driver he shares routes with in his favorite car.

Hamaguchi takes the time – three full hours – to guide the viewer through the labyrinth of his multi-layered genius screenplay, adapted from a story by Haruki Murakami. It all starts with the loss, the deprivation of a loved one, which marks the existence of those left behind. This feeling Yusuke shares with his enigmatic mentor, even if he doesn’t know her for a long time, as well as with some of his new teammates. And then there is communication. The director’s eye through a “colleague” in the film itself, who brings up a multilingual “Uncle Vanya” who speaks Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and sign language at the same time. Daily communication is now becoming a problem, as it is in other dimensions of life.

And all this despite the fact that Chekhov’s text is in direct dialogue with the main characters. Clips are played continuously from the tape during car rides, while the actors—and we—go through a continuous process of deeper understanding of the play. In general, here the rhythms are slow, and the silence is as important as the words, and the camera work remains unpretentious, interspersed with some almost poetic moments. As human passions, weaknesses and delicate balances unfold on an axis that unites present and past, the vintage Saab 900 continues to travel through modern highways and enchanting natural landscapes as if taken from another dimension, a vehicle capable of driving its passengers in redemption. or even in the healing of their wounds.