Drive My Car

The eponymous short story that is the source material is less than forty pages long, and apart from a few micro-paragraphs, it makes do with dialogue "about nothing" between two characters in a car (a yellow one!) during night drives through Tokyo. The adaptation is three hours long, taking barely a few points of contact from the original and incorporating motifs from other stories in the "Men Without Women" collection (which is not one of Haruki's more accomplished ones). It takes its cues from his non-magical-realist work (so it doesn't threaten Murakami's bingo), and it's all taken up by Hamaguchi in his own untamed way. The opening third in particular is, however, shamefully literal; what the source material manages to say in a couple of sentences here is shown at length, and not much of it. Once the plot shifts in time, however, it at least begins to work on multiple levels (knowledge of Chekhov's “Uncle Vanya” is expected for full enjoyment), where everything says much more. It looks at the creative process, how to communicate through art, what we want to know but are afraid to ask, various forms of (un)happy relationships, about men and women, about grief, about theatre, "why him, what does he have that I don't", about supposed guilt, about femmes fatales, about the gradual opening to others and to oneself… Well, there's not much that Hamaguchi has left unbitten, and he can basically chew it all. The running time is enormous, but except for the cursed opening prologue, not unreasonable. However, despite all its qualities (a perfectly hit melancholic note), it's still hard not to pigeonhole it as "genteel sophisticated boredom", because it's more interesting "how the filmmakers work with it and deal with it all" than "what it is like". (24.03.2022)

Anyone who has read anything by Haruki Murakami, even just a single book, will soon know how it is. You delve deep into art, sex, mental health, and feelings of abandonment – and you keep going back there almost constantly. Unfortunately, in the remaining time, there is a multilingual attempt at Russian classics, which are indeed related to the main character's many problems, but never justify why the sufficiently understandable quest for one's own paths takes three hours. Luckily, Hidetoshi Nishijima appears in the main role, and his intense and focused-every-second or even broken gaze carries the viewer from one car to another without feeling the passage of time. (28.03.2022)

No, I will not throw out superlatives and I will remain significantly reserved in my evaluation. Some directors successfully fit the adaptation of a several hundred-page novel into a two-hour blockbuster, but Hamaguchi managed to stretch the adaptation of a short story one-tenth of the size into three hours. It took me three tries to watch the film and that's not a good sign. I constantly felt like I was watching a snail on vacation, not in a rush to get anywhere. The film drags on and even though it introduces interesting motifs regarding the artistic creative process and the psychological aspect of coping with the departure of a loved one, it really doesn't deserve a higher rating. Overall impression: 55%. I am horrified at the thought of how long the adaptation of a thick tome of a 19th-century Russian classic would stretch in the hands of this director. (19.03.2024)

La película se centra en el inesperado entendimiento que se produce entre un director de teatro de mediana edad y una joven chófer privada que podría ser su hija, asignada a él contra su voluntad por la compañía teatral. Gracias a la confianza que se va construyendo poco a poco, ambos pueden confiarse sus traumas y secretos, que forman parte de una historia compleja y de múltiples capas que habla, entre otras cosas, de las relaciones de pareja y el dolor de perder a una persona cercana o querida. Todo transcurre con el telón de fondo de los ensayos teatrales de «Tío Vania», de Chéjov, en una versión multilingüe (incluido el lenguaje de signos surcoreano), con diálogos de la obra a menudo presentes en otras partes de la película. A pesar de que la trama no se pone realmente en marcha hasta pasados más de 40 minutos (cuando por fin llegan los créditos iniciales), la duración de la película no es obstáculo alguno. Además, la película está excelentemente escrita y dirigida de principio a fin, y destaca no sólo por su énfasis en la comunicación formal y distanciada entre los personajes, sino también por sus numerosas escenas sorprendentemente imaginativas y la inclusión de varias fascinantes microhistorias oníricas. (29.08.2021)

I've never read anything by Murakami, nor have I seen any film adaptation of his work to date, so Drive My Car was my first encounter with this world-famous writer. I was a bit put off from the screening by the three-hour running time, but it didn't matter that much in the end. Indeed, Hamaguchi's film (and fresh Oscar winner) has a gradual but not boring narrative pace. We follow the story of director Kafuku and his driver Misaki, two people who have little in common at first glance, yet are united by guilt and the trauma of having lost a loved one. In hindsight, it could be said that the basic structure of the film isn't really that original – we've seen coming to terms with the past and the struggle with its demons elsewhere – but Drive My Car has several moments and elements that bring it to life – the behind-the-scenes preparation of a play, the blending of several cultures and languages (thumbs up for the insertion of sign language), or even the opening credits almost halfway through the film. PS: Kafuku does bring to mind the name Kafka for a reason (see the author's 2002 novel). (28.03.2022)

"It’s Winter Sleep. I haven't seen you since 2014." "You know, I left early after you burned my film reels and wrote on them, ‘get out of town, you pompous monologist’." "And what part of ‘get out of town, you pompous monologist’ didn't you understand?" If a Saab had spent three hours going zoom around the unglamorous parts of Japan and we could just listen to it go from tunnel to tunnel, I'd be totally cool. Unfortunately, Hamaguchi and Oe have decided to create a monument to academic filmmaking, so for three hours we mostly listen to the theater-director-coping-with-loss-through-multilingual-elaboration-of-Chekhov's-play, and in between he introduces his mute driver to the mystery. Oh, the prizes this will win. With some of the endless monologues in the second half of the film, I had to remind myself how fantastic visual art can otherwise be in its ability to compress themes. Otherwise, it would always look like this. In the future, I'd love to have a wordless cut of the film. In the meantime, I invented a drinking game for you in the cinema. Don't worry, it's pretty cool. A sip of beer whenever a car enters or exits a tunnel and a shot whenever there's a shot of a record playing. Three hours later, it'll sink in nicely and you'll go home uplifted and in good spirits. (25.03.2022)

"Even if you think you know someone well, even if you love that person deeply, you can never see right into their heart. It would only hurt you. But if you try hard enough, you should be able to see inside your own. So in the end, we should try to act on our convictions and make peace with ourselves. If you really want to get to know someone, your only option is to look deep inside yourself." - Based on Haruki Murakami's short story of the same name, acclaimed director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi has made an unusually visceral movie about love and loss, guilt and emptiness, but also about the strong will not to give up, and to move on. It's really hard to get through the killer footage, but I think it's worth the time. (75%) (05.05.2023)

I try to enrich myself with Asian cinema from time to time, so I decided to watch this film because I came across it often. It is a very slow, sensitive and thoughtful story. We have to wait longer to uncover the characters' troubled pasts, but you won't be disappointed, this is a story of escape, reconciliation, forgiveness and hope. The performances are very moving, and despite the very long running time, managed to keep my attention until the end. (21.02.2023)