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After a brief transition early in the three-hour running time of Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s remarkable “Drive My Car,” in which the wheels of the film’s integral automobile transform into the reels of a cassette tape in a recorder, the film is considered a triumph. For a brief moment, they are fused together, almost as if the voice captured on that device served as the vehicle’s gasoline. And in a sense, it does, because the audio tracks accompany the driver like a sonic ghost for miles and miles on end.
“Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” is the second Hamaguchi-directed feature film to be released this year (the first was “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy”), and it takes its inspiration from one of Haruki Murakami’s short stories from the collection Men Without Women. “Drive My Car,” which has been selected as Japan’s entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar — the first time a filmmaker’s work has received this honor — marks the filmmaker’s well-deserved breakthrough.
Hidetoshi Nishijima and his wife, screenwriter Oto (Reika Kirishima), spend their post-coital time verbally developing a story for Oto’s next television project while basking in the afterglow of their marriage. They tell the story of a teenage girl who is so enamored with a classmate that she infiltrates his home to steal souvenirs that were left behind. Their spontaneous fiction establishes itself as one of the storytelling layers that eventually overlap with self-referential grace under the auspicious narrative guidance of Hamaguchi and co-screenwriter Takamasa Oe, who also serves as the film’s director.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Japanese nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, director Yûsuke moves to Hiroshima, which has its own history of natural disasters, to stage a new stage version of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which will be performed by actors speaking their respective native languages. His employer requires him to accept the use of a chauffeur, a requirement that he finds difficult to accept. The act of getting behind the wheel of his out-of-date, two-door vehicle is almost ritualistic in its significance.
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The artist’s car, which blazes bright red through the streets and highways, is a temple of freedom and solitude, the embodiment of the return and the departure, the means of returning to his beloved and the means of escaping the repercussions of their current circumstances. During the silence of that moving space, Oto’s voice comes through the speakers via the previously mentioned tape feeding him lines, which serves as a lifeline for the character. The passages she recites may be taken from a classic text or they may have been written by her directly, but the distinction is irrelevant. In a continuum, they merge into one and the same thing.
With softhearted tact, “Drive My Car” considers Yûsuke’s inner plight from the removed safety of an unnoticed reflection in a mirror, then with the up-close intensity of two people listening to one another as if the world around them has faded into irrelevance. The song never pushes too hard, instead allowing the pain to unfold at its own pace. Although his emotional containment has been a long time in the making, when Yûsuke finally receives the divine relief of catharsis from Hamaguchi, the long period of emotional containment results in a staggering, shared release.
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Nishijima’s performance is unassumingly shattering, a description that is equally applicable to the film as a whole. Nishijima’s performance astounds for its understatedness. As a grieving husband and father who conceals his ongoing distress with professional diligence, he maintains a high level of composure until he is unable to contain his rage towards the person he cherished the most, at which point he snaps. The actor’s stoic gestures serve as an impenetrable fortress, refusing to give away any hints of his true identity to those around him.
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His desire to remain unnoticed and unquestioned is matched by the energy of Misaki (Tôko Miura), his assigned personal driver, who is also fleeing from her own guilt, which she has buried in the ruins of a previous life that is more than a safe distance away from where he is currently hiding. A gradual but growing affection for Misaki is revealed as the audience witnesses Yûsuke’s daily rehearsals with his cast, which includes embattled star Kôji Takatsuki (Misaki Okada). Miura’s modestly assertive performance amplifies a sense of mutual confidentiality, and later, a sense of guilt that numbs them both, throughout the film.
A reservable Misaki’s initial interaction with him is limited to pressing the play button on his recording. However, a dinner scene in which he compliments her on her smooth driving skills completely dismantles any vestiges of servitude that may have remained in the power imbalance that had been imposed on them. As an example of an unspoken understanding between people, Hamaguchi points to the way Yûsuke’s internationally renowned thespians perform with one another from sensorial memory, often not understanding what the other is saying through language but feeling alone.
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The film, which is rich in subtle imagery from cinematographer Hidetoshi Shinomiya, mines majestic visual symbolism from what appears to be everyday occurrences. Think of a shot of Yûsuke and Misaki’s hand reaching into their sacred mode of transportation while holding cigarettes through the sunroof—an unspoken communion of respect between the two people who are traveling together. In the backseat of the tried and tested four-wheeled co-car, star’s long conversations force the camera to remain on their faces, registering the enunciation and reaction of the other without any other embellishments, honoring what is being said and how the other is receiving it. Even in its simplest form, the back and forth between two interlocutors who are not afraid to express their sincerity is engrossing to watch.
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A decision not to include flashbacks in this sprawling, humanistic epic is in keeping with the theme of what lies ahead rather than what is in the rearview mirror of the past, which runs throughout the film. It is not in visions of who they were that characters come to life, but in the product of those experiences, in who they have become. When Hamaguchi’s direction is applied with a delicate and patient touch, the characters cease to be idealized confections created from words and ideas on the page of a scribe. According to what appears to be osmosis, their transformation into the bodies of the cast members is intended to impart not patronizing wisdom but rather an empathetic revelation that feels lived-in. With its vehicular poetry of the sorrow from which we run, the collisions that awaken us, and the healing gained from every bump in the road, “Drive My Car” is both devasting and comforting in its spiritual confrontation with oneself as its final destination.
Select theaters are now showing the film.
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