The genius that underpins this beautifully acted film lies is the way Hamaguchi’s screenplay takes the themes of Murakami’s story – loss, love, jealousy, healing – and finds echoes of them in Chekhov’s famous play. What a clever, haunting way to show the power of art The presence of the tyro actor in his version of ‘Vanya’ feels like a harsh coincidence, but soon plays like the hand of fate. Oto’s death is dealt with in Drive My Car' s enigmatic pre-credit stretch but the mysteries she leaves behind – the half-finished dream she teases her husband with, the young actor Yusuke finds her with in a subsequently unmentioned tryst at their apartment – hang over the remainder of the film like a veil. His burgeoning odd-couple kinship with his young female chauffeur (Toko Miura) is beautifully observed, as she spirits him around in his vintage red Saab 900. But, crucially, it’s never remotely meandering, as theatre director Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), reeling from the sudden death of his screenwriter wife, Oto, heads south to Hiroshima to stage a version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. ![]() The fact that the film’s opening credits don’t roll until more than 40 minutes in – by which point they practically qualify as jump shock – gives a hint of just how ruminative Hamaguchi’s filmmaking style is. His undemonstrative camerawork, gentle rhythms and fascination with the emotional hinterlands of troubled souls bring a similarly soulful gaze to the bustle of modern life as Ozu did to mid-century Japan. The Japanese filmmaker, who is finally breaking through in the west, has been compared with the great Yasujirō Ozu and, well… fair. I bet you could sing along.Writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi takes a slender Haruki Murakami short story and expands it into three captivating, enigmatic hours with a slowburn drama that’s full of quiet swells that steal up and sweep you away. He accepts, in part, because the hour-long drive between the theatre and his residence gives him all the more time to spend in his red SAAB listening to Oto read lines on tape.īut into the picture comes the taciturn Misaki (Toko Miura), a young woman hired to … well, you know the song, and it’s an old favorite: Two strangers spend hours in each other’s company, gradually warming to each other, finally helping one another heal and grow. Still reeling from his loss, he leaps at the chance to direct a multi-lingual, multi-cultural adaptation of “Uncle Vanya,” where every actor speaks a different language and comes from a different country. Having buried their only child years before, they enter middle age with a marriage built on a foundation of love, but one where the cracks of ennui and infidelity continue to grow.īy the time the titles finally hit, Kafuku has become a widower and the narrative has moved forward two years in time. ![]() ![]() But why fault a film for trying - especially when the initial results are so achingly good, evoking with such precision the fraught but loving marriage between stage actor Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and screenwriter Oto (Reika Kirishima). Not that “Drive My Car” is in any way a misfire it just takes a risk that doesn’t quite work. ‘The Humans’ Film Review: Cast Shines in Moody Adaptation of Pulitzer-Winning Family Drama
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