There’s a filmmaker who has released two outstanding films this year and, no, it’s not Ridley Scott—it’s Japanese writer/director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi. His first film of the year, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, was a triptych composed of unrelated short stories united by themes of coincidences, lies, performance, and, well, fantasy. You can see elements of these three shorts in Drive My Car, Hamaguchi’s second film of 2021, adapted from the short story of the same name by famed Japanese writer Haruki Murakami (with some added elements inspired by Murakami’s other short stories, “Scheherazade” and “Kino”). Hamaguchi wrote and directed Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy as a sort of test drive for adapting Drive My Car. “I wasn’t certain that ‘Drive My Car’ would happen at the time, but I was intensely focused on the challenges that might be ahead of me if it did,” the director said. “I knew that it would involve conversations in cars, a number of explicitly sexual scenes, and that it was going to be about the subject of performance.”

Knowing this information going into my viewing of Drive My Car was what ended up ruining the experience for me. While, yes, there are noticeable hints of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy in Drive My Car, the former featured plot twists in each short story, so I was too distracted in waiting for the plot twist that never came in the latter. So when I left the theater, I was disappointed, not because the film was bad—far from it—but because I was hoping for the immediate satisfaction of “Wow, that was a great film!” that Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy gave me.

Yet here I am, three weeks later, and I’m still thinking about the film. And the more I think about it, the more I like it. And the more I like it, the more I’m convinced Drive My Car is a masterpiece. And it’s one of the best films of the year.

Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a prominent theater actor happily married to Oto (Reika Kirishima), a television screenwriter. The two have an unusual secret. She comes up with story ideas while they have sex, and he remembers it for her the following morning. Her latest story features a girl who sneaks into her crush’s home and steals unremarkable items, one at a time. As it turns out, there’s more similarities between this fictional story and Oto than Yūsuke realized, after he discovers his wife has been sneaking off to have affairs. “How can she say she loves me but also be with other men?” he wonders. But when Yūsuke finally works up the courage to confront Oto, she dies from a sudden brain hemorrhage before he could do so.

This all happens within the first 40 minutes, which is when the opening credits finally kick in. The script by Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe set up a momentous prologue that will haunt Yūsuke and the rest of the film.

After a timeskip, Yūsuke has been hired as the director of a new and unique, multilingual stage production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” Per his contract, Yūsuke is required to have a chauffeur, 23-year-old Misaki Watari (Tōko Miura), provided by the theater company, to drive him to and from work. Yūsuke is against the idea because the long commutes are when he practices his lines, responding to cassette tapes with lines read from the now-deceased Oto. Our cars are intimate spaces where we have some of our deepest, most personal thoughts. Yūsuke’s two-door, red Saab 900 is his sacred space to be alone with Oto, so the idea of another person being there is unacceptable. But, alas, he’s already signed the contract.

It doesn’t take long for Yūsuke to respect Misaki, though. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and, more importantly, is an excellent driver (In fact, she drives so well that Yūsuke sometimes forgets they’re even driving). Yūsuke soon learns Misaki harbors her own traumatic secrets and, coincidentally, relies on driving to cope.

In addition to the driving sequences, the bulk of the film takes place in the workshopping of “Uncle Vanya.” The production includes a diverse cast of actors who don’t speak the same language. They individually speak Japanese, English, Mandarin, Tagalog, and Korean Sign Language. Unable to understand one another verbally, Yūsuke pushes the actors to move beyond words—toward feeling and human connection—in order to connect with one another personally.

Among the play’s cast is Kōji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), the young actor Oto was having an affair with, and who recently resigned from the spotlight due to a major (unrelated) scandal. And, in a surprise to everyone involved in the production, Yūsuke casts Kōji in the lead role as Uncle Vanya. In their two months of rehearsals, the two have more private conversations, each hoping to learn more about each other and the woman they both loved. In the film’s prologue, Yūsuke is performing in a stage production of “Waiting For Godot,” which features characters waiting for the elusive Godot, who never appears. Yūsuke is stuck in the past, waiting for an answer to his wife’s betrayal, but this revelation never arrives.

Drive My Car is not an easy film to endure. It’s a slow burn. It’s conversation-heavy. There are many moments of pure silence. It shows instead of telling. It requires you to be in the right mood and mindset to engage with. But the film earns every minute of its imposing 179-minute running time, just a minute shy of three hours (and, thankfully, it doesn’t feel like a three-hour movie), and it rewards patient viewers with a powerful ending. It’s easy to dismiss the film’s craft because nothing is flashy and they fly under the radar: the beautiful cinematography from Hidetoshi Shinomiya, the soothing score from Eiko Ishibashi (it’s the perfect music to listen to on long drives), and the emotionally powerful performances from the entire cast, led by Nishijima’s nuanced and arresting performance as a grieving widow (Park Yoo-rim is especially good as the “Uncle Vanya” cast member who speaks through Korean Sign Language).

The beauty of the film wasn’t immediately apparent to me because I was too distracted looking for things that never came rather than experiencing the film, but in the three weeks I’ve spent thinking about the film, letting it sit with me, I’ve come to really appreciate it. There’s a reason Drive My Car won Best Screenplay at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (becoming the first Japanese film to do so), earned a spot on Obama’s list of favorite movies of 2021, and has potential Oscar nominations in its future. It’s never predictable. There are no explosive confrontations like you’d expect. Despite its dedication to characters dealing with trauma, it intentionally doesn’t rely on any flashbacks, cleverly allowing the lengthy prologue to become our (the audience’s) own memories. In their two months together, all of the characters—in both the Saab and workshop, bond with, and learn from, one another, even if they can’t speak the same language. They peel back each other’s layers and guide one another into new directions.

“Chekhov is terrifying,” Yūsuke says. “When you say his lines, it drags out the real you.” Similarly, the film reveals its own terrifying truths, like how you can never truly know a person, no matter how large a role they’ve played in your life. Drive My Car is a subtle, yet rich tale of grief, regret, acceptance, forgiveness, and moving on. “Those who survive keep thinking about the dead,” Yūsuke says dolefully. “We must keep on living.” Like the wheels of a car, life moves forward.

Three and a half out of four Kents.

‘Drive My Car’ is playing in select theatres. Click here to see when the film opens in your city.

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