Drive My Car is a slow paced character driven drama with excellent performances from a talented cast.

 

I wanted to get outside of my comfort zone for this blog post. Normally, I like to watch action movies, crime dramas or thrillers. Something fast paced and full of tense, nail biting action as that's what I'm into. So, I deliberately set out to watch something slow paced and devoid of action in order to deliver some more variety on this blog. The movie I chose just so happened to star Hidetoshi Nishijima, whom I'm a big fan of and also won 3 awards at the 2021 Cannes film festival. That's right, I'm referring to the character driven drama, Drive My Car, directed and co-written by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. 

Drive My Car tells the story of Yusuke Hafuku. Yusuke is a theatre actor and director and is married to screenwriter, Oto Hafuku. Oto weaves her tales during sex and narrates them to Yusuke as they come to her. Yusuke drives his precious red Saab 900 turbo and listens to tapes of Oto's voice as she recorded line of his play for him. Shortly after performing the play, Waiting For Godot, Oto introduces a young up and coming actor, Koji Takatsuki. Unfortunately for our protagonist, he walks in on Koji and Oto having an affair on his couch. Despite this, he doesn't disturb the pair and leaves. One day, Yusuke is in a car crash and is told by his doctor that he developed glaucoma in his left eye, and as such will have difficulty driving in the future. Following this, Oto calls Yusuke and wants to have a serious conversation with him, but before the pair can talk, Yusuke finds Oto dead due to a cerebral haemorrhage. Yusuke breaks down whilst performing the title role in a production of the play, Vanya. Three years later, he accepts an offer to direct a multilingual production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. Surprisingly, Koji shows up to audition for the role of Vanya. 

Ryusuke Hamaguchi is a very competent director and his direction brings out such subtleties from his talented cast that it's hard not to be impressed. The script does a wonderful job at focusing on how each main character has their own problems and how they each overcome their emotional trauma and baggage. It's impressive that Hamaguchi-san and Takamasa Oe wrote a three-hour long script from Haruki Murakami's short story. The camerawork is focused and each shot serves a distinct purpose. Cinematographer Hidetoshi Shinomiya did an excellent job using a wide variety of shots that are often at times beautiful. In particular, I loved his use of light and shadow right of the very beginning of the movie to keep the opening tasteful and modest, whilst also being a visual treat. Then there's the most tense scene in the movie which happens during a car ride. Yusuke and Koji have an intense discussion about Oto, with the camera being quite close to each actors face and it just feels like you could cut the tangible tension in the air with a knife. There are some solid reaction shots in that scene that highlights the expressions and emotions being shown. 

The editing is solid. Although, in my humble opinion the pacing is almost unbearably slow to the point where I found my mind wandering off and thinking about other things. 

Surprisingly, I found the minimal approach to the soundtrack tremendous. A lot of scenes are devoid of music entirely and that helps the movie feel a little more real. It helps that I found the sound of the car engine to be rather soothing. 

Hidetoshi Nishijima is simply wonderful in the leading role of Yusuke Hafuku. He brings all of the required nuance and subtlety in spades. His emotional out-pouring's in a number of scenes with Misaki, Oto and Koji are a highlight of the movie. His performance in the theatre production is sublime and makes him really sympathetic. He also had tremendous chemistry with Reika Kirishima to the point where they had a really believable relationship and their scenes in the early portion of the movie are a delight. My favourite scene is one that I described earlier, the car ride that Yusuke and Koji share a deep, tense conversation about Oto during. Both Nishijima-san and Masaki Okada deliver in such a big moment. The facial expressions, the emotions and the subtleties are all on point as both actors are on their A-game. It's a well written scene and it might be for the best that I didn't write it because I would have ended it completely differently! 

Masaki Okada is superb in the role of actor Koji Takatsuki. He's not the most sympathetic character, but he is a layered one. The scenes he has with Nishijima-san are full of tension due to the actions of Koji and Oto. It's the most gripping part of the movie as it kept me on edge wondering just what would happen between the two. 

Overall, I rather enjoyed the movie despite it's slow pace. It's not a favourite of mine by any means, but it delved into some interesting philosophical territory and had depth. I'd recommend it to drama lovers that are into character driven stories that can be bleak at times.