Don’t be scared off by the epic running time of Drive My Car; it may run just shy of three hours, but it flies by like a dream. The director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi has adapted and significantly expanded a 2014 short story by Haruki Murakami, but nothing about it feels belabored or drawn out. There’s more going on in any five minutes of Drive My Car than in some movies in their entirety. It’s an intricately structured drama about love and loss, and the ways in which art can and can’t compensate for some of life’s disappointments. I’ll be surprised if I see a more absorbing movie this year, or a better one.
The story follows a middle-aged Tokyo stage actor named Kafuku, superbly played by Hidetoshi Nishijima. He’s a calm, mild-mannered guy who’s been married for two decades to a screenwriter named Oto. We get a sense of their mutual devotion when we see Kafuku driving around in his bright red Saab, rehearsing his lines by listening to audio tapes that Oto has painstakingly recorded for him.
But their relationship is more complicated than it appears. Years ago, Kafuku and Oto experienced an agonizing loss that has led her to find solace—and perhaps something more—in relationships with other men. Kafuku has deep compassion for his wife, which doesn’t make her betrayal any less painful. And then another tragedy strikes when Oto dies suddenly.
If that sounds like a lot, Drive My Car is just warming up. Two years later, as he tries to move on with his life, Kafuku accepts an arts residency at a theater festival in Hiroshima, where he will direct an experimental production of Chekhov‘s Uncle Vanya.
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