Drive My Car

O filme centra-se no inesperado entendimento que ocorre entre um diretor de teatro de meia-idade e uma jovem motorista pessoal que poderia ser a sua filha, e que lhe foi atribuída contra a sua vontade pela companhia de teatro. Através da confiança gradualmente construída, ambos são capazes de confiar no outro os seus traumas e segredos, que fazem parte de uma história complexa e multifacetada que revela, entre outras coisas, relações de parceria e amantes e a dor de perder uma pessoa próxima ou amada. Tudo isto ocorre contra o pano de fundo dos ensaios teatrais do Tio Vânia de Tchécov numa versão multilingue (incluindo a linguagem de sinais sul-coreana), estando o diálogo da peça frequentemente presente noutras partes do filme. Apesar do facto de o enredo só começar realmente dentro de mais de 40 minutos (quando os créditos de abertura finalmente chegam), a duração do filme não é de todo um obstáculo. Além disso, o filme é extraordinariamente bem escrito e realizado do princípio ao fim, e destaca-se não só pela sua ênfase na comunicação formal e educada entre os personagens, mas também pelo número de cenas notavelmente imaginativas e pela integração de várias micro-histórias fascinantes de sonhos. (29/08/2021)

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)

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)

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)

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)