A Deep Dive into Grief & Connection
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 masterpiece: A three-hour meditative journey through the secrets we keep and the shared languages we find.
A thoughtful and tearful ride in which the destination is a spiritual confrontation with oneself, “Drive My Car” devastates and comforts through 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.
Basking in post-coital serenity, actor and theater direc.tor Yûsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his wife, screenwriter Oto (Reika Kirishima), verbally build a story for her next television project. They speak of a teenage girl so infatuated with a classmate she infiltrates his home to steal unmissed souvenirs. Their spontaneous fiction sets in 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.
Two years after a personal tragedy laced with unresolved resentment, Yûsuke moves to Hiroshima, a city with its own history of disaster, to put on a new stage version of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, performed by actors speaking their respective native tongues. As part of the job, he must agree to have a chauffer, a condition he is reluctant to. Getting behind the wheel of his outdated, two-door model is ritualistic in its importance.
Burning bright red through the streets and highways, the artist’s car is a temple of freedom and solitude, the embodiment of the return and the departure, the way back home to his beloved and the escape from the fallout of their present. It’s in the silence of that moving space that Oto’s voice comes through the speakers via the aforementioned tape feeding him lines, a lifeline.
Unassumingly shattering, a description just as applicable to the film as a whole, Nishijima’s turn astounds for its unshowiness. As a grief-stricken husband and father masking his continued distress with professional diligence, he maintains strenuous composure until he can no longer swallow his anger towards the person he loved most. The actor’s stoic gestures provide an impenetrable fortress unwilling to give away any hint of his true self.
That energy, of wanting to remain unnoticed and unquestioned, is matched by his assigned personal driver, Misaki (Tôko Miura), a young woman in turn running from her own guilt buried in the ruins of a previous life more than a safe distance away. While observing Yûsuke’s daily rehearsals with his cast, including embattled star Kôji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), a slowly constructed affinity with Misaki comes to the foreground. Miura’s modestly assertive performance amplifies a sentiment of mutual confidentiality, and later of the guilt that numbs them both.
A reserved Misaki initially limits her interaction to pressing play on his recording. But a dinner scene where he praises her smooth driving skills dismantles whatever air of servitude was left in the power imbalance imposed on them. Hamaguchi further speaks of an unspoken understanding between people in the way Yûsuke’s international thespians perform with one another from sensorial memory, often not comprehending what the other says through language but feeling alone.
Bountiful in subtle imagery from cinematographer Hidetoshi Shinomiya, the film mines majestic visual symbolism from seemingly ordinary occurrences. Take for example a shot of Yûsuke and Misaki’s hand through the car’s sunroof holding cigarettes as to not let the smoke permeate their sacred mode of transportation—an unspoken communion of respect. Long conversations in the back seat of the tried and tested four-wheeled co-star force the camera to stay on their faces, registering the enunciation and reaction of the other without other embellishments, honoring what's being said and how the other is receiving it. That back and forth between two interlocutors nakedly spewing sincerity feels riveting in its simple composition.
The Long Road to Healing
The Prologue: Tokyo
The film begins with a 40-minute prologue detailing the complex marriage of Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a stage actor and director, and his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a screenwriter. Their bond is built on a unique creative ritual: Oto conceives stories during sex and narrates them to Yusuke, who later recites them back to her.
Despite their intimacy, Yusuke discovers Oto’s infidelity but chooses never to confront her, fearing he might lose her. Before they can have a "serious conversation" she requests, Oto dies suddenly of a brain hemorrhage, leaving Yusuke haunted by what remained unsaid and the mysteries of her affairs.
The Residency: Hiroshima
Two years later, a still-grieving Yusuke accepts a residency in Hiroshima to direct a multilingual production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Due to insurance regulations, the festival requires him to have a chauffeur. He is assigned Misaki Watari (Toko Miura), a stoic and highly skilled 23-year-old woman.
The Red Saab 900 Turbo
The car is the most significant "character" in the film. For Yusuke, it is a private mobile stage where he rehearses his lines against a cassette recording of Oto’s voice.
Control vs. Surrender: Handing the keys to Misaki symbolizes Yusuke's first step toward relinquishing his rigid emotional control and letting someone else into his internal world.
The Sanctuary: The car provides a neutral, safe space where characters can speak truths that are too painful to utter in the "real world."
The Climax: Hokkaido
The emotional peak occurs when Yusuke and Misaki drive to her childhood home in Hokkaido—a site of shared trauma (Misaki’s mother died in a landslide there, and Misaki failed to save her). In the snowy ruins, they both finally forgive themselves
Parallel Narratives: The Role of Uncle Vanya
The film is a "text within a text." The lines from Chekhov’s play often act as a Greek chorus, commenting on Yusuke’s internal state.
Vanya’s Regret: Like Vanya, Yusuke feels he has wasted years of his life on a false idol (his idealized version of his marriage).
The Multilingual Method: Yusuke forces his actors to read the script without emotion for weeks. This mirrors his own life—stuck in a repetitive, mechanical grief until the "performance" of daily life finally breaks through to raw truth.
Comparisons: Film vs. Murakami’s Short Story
While Hamaguchi stays true to the spirit of Murakami’s story from Men Without Women, he makes several significant expansions:
The Car: In the book, the car is a yellow Saab convertible. Hamaguchi changed it to a red hardtop to make it more visually striking against the Hiroshima landscape and to emphasize the "contained" nature of the space.
The Character of Misaki: The film gives Misaki a much deeper backstory and a parallel arc of trauma, making her a co-protagonist rather than just a catalyst for Yusuke’s growth.
The Ending: The film’s final scene in Korea is entirely original to the movie, suggesting a continuity of life and healing that goes beyond the original text.
Evil Does Not Exist (2023)
“You can’t get a head start if you aim for perfection,” a clueless moneyed entrepreneur muses during a video chat with his two shell-shocked subordinates in the new film from writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. In the context of the actual conversation the sentiment is even more inane than it sounds on the face of it. And there’s also the question if perfection itself even ... exists? The title of this movie seems a definitive statement but it’s ultimately not one that the movie itself really settles.
"The messaging resonates and Hamaguchi makes good points, but the film fails to be immersive enough to really engage the viewer. While Drive My Car grabs your attention for all of its 179 minutes, Evil Does Not Exist can barely do the same for 105. There are moments of beauty and simplicity, but not nearly enough to sustain a feature. There’s meaning to be wrung out of extended shots of trees, lumberjacking, and deer skulls, sure, but the movie’s ambivalence gets old quick."
