TIFF 2021: A Hero, Drive My Car, Sundown | Festivals & Awards

There’s also a sharp intellectual quality in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s highly acclaimed “Drive My Car,” already a bit buzzed for cinephiles as the 180-minute movie that doesn’t feel nearly that long. It’s really a conversation between three artists—Hamaguchi, writer Haruki Murakami, and Anton Chekhov—in a story about the art of collaboration and how relationships aren’t really about deciphering what’s in someone else’s heart as much as they are about figuring out your own. It’s a bit self-indulgent at times (and the reports of not feeling the length are a little overblown), but there’s also a great degree of confidence here as Hamaguchi lets his characters bounce off each other, connecting and the pulling apart again, until he lands in an incredible ending that drive homes (sorry) so many of the themes at play here with unexpected emotional weight.

In a 40-minute prologue before the credits even roll, we’re introduced to an actor/director named Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a playwright who has some of her most creative moments after sex. She often details her writing ideas to Kafuku, using him as a sounding board and creative partner. They have a supportive relationship, even though Kafuku catches her with another man. Perhaps he knows it’s just part of her process. And then Oto dies, leaving Kafuku with only the questions he still has about the love of his life, and recordings of her reading Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which he listens to as he drives.

The problem is that he won’t be able to do that for a few months. Two years later, Kafuku is hired to direct a version of Vanya at a theatre festival in Hiroshima. The rules of the theater company, along with Kafuku’s glaucoma, means that Misaki (Toko Miura) will have to be his chauffeur. The two form a friendship as Hamaguchi really turns the film into an ensemble piece, one that includes a confident young actor in Kafuku’s lead role and the producer of the play.

In one of many fascinating choices that amplifies the overall theme, Kafuku’s production of Vanya is multi-lingual with subtitles up on a screen behind the actors. One of the performers even speaks Korean sign language. It’s a startling idea that a text can be so powerful that a cast can find its themes across multiple languages, including one that’s not even verbal. And it’s really at the core of what Hamaguchi is doing here, weaving the source material, his vision, his performers, and even many of the themes of Vanya. The result is a captivating commentary on collaboration and connection that somehow allows all of its many voices to be heard, both individually and together.