Drive My Car and Chekhov

The Japanese film Drive My Car (now on HBO Max) was a worthy Best-Foreign-Film Oscar winner for 2022. Unlike many inferior films, however, it requires patience—a virtue in short supply these days. Its three hours length is just too much (literally) for many, especially those who dislike relying on subtitles.

We all come to films and literature with our own unique backgrounds. If we are a salesman, for example, we will view Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman differently than say a doctor or teacher does. If we had a father that believed he was a failure, as opposed to one who felt very successful, the plight of Willy Loman (the “salesman”) will also affect us differently.

I saw Drive My Car about ten months after the death of my wife, Nancy, and the main character of the film, the drama director Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), also loses his wife, Oto. Two years later he says, “There must be something. I can't take this. I'm 47 years old. If I live to be 60, that's 13 years I have before me. That's so long. How am I supposed to live out those 13 years?” (Quotes are taken from the film’s transcript.)

Although, I’m much older than Kafuku, I have experienced a similar feeling and asked myself, “How am I supposed to live out” my remaining years? Kafuku later tells the young female driver of his car, Misaki (Tôko Miura), “I want to apologize [to Oto]. For not listening. For not being strong. I want to apologize. I want her back. I want her to live. I want to talk to her just once more. I want to see her. But it's too late. There's no turning back. There's nothing I can do. Those who survive keep thinking about the dead….You and I must keep living like that. We must keep on living.”

I know that feeling of regretting those past moments with a spouse when we could have been more loving, when we could have been a better listener, when we could have been more empathetic. We wish we could have a second chance. But, of course, we can’t. We have to accept that like all humans we are (and were) far from perfect—“to err is human”—and just keep trying to be better.

Like many excellent books, plays, and films, Drive My Car deals with issues that have universal significance. In this case both Kafuku and Misaki (a required driver assigned to Kafuku, while he is directing Chekhov’ play Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima), feel guilty over the death of someone close to them. Kafuku, for his wife. Misaki, for her mother. At one point Kafuku says to Misaki, “You killed your mother, and I killed my wife.” That is an exaggeration, but both individuals think that if they had acted differently in crucial moments Oto and Misaki’s mother might still be alive.

Many minutes in the film involve director Kafuku preparing his actors for performances of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya or listening to a recording of the play on his automobile cassette player; and like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Dickens, and many other great writers, Chekhov’s works have universal meaning. (They are especially popular in Japan, where his plays were first translated and staged about a century ago.)

A dozen years ago my “Anton Chekhov: A Man for Our Times” appeared on LA Progressive. In it I pointed out all the ways his plays and hundreds of short stories continue to be timely—in a later piece I indicated how relevant Uncle Vanya and some of Chekhov’s other writings were to our present environmental crises.

Among his various appreciators perhaps Cornel West, once called the “pre-eminent African American intellectual of his generation,” stated it best regarding the Russian’s continuing timeliness: “I find the incomparable works of Anton Chekhov—the best singular body by a modern artist—to be the wisest and deepest interpretations of what human beings confront in their daily struggles….I find inspiration in his refusal to escape from the pain and misery of life by indulging in dogmas, doctrines or dreams as well as abstract systems, philosophic theodicies or political utopias.”

The director of Drive My Car, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, no doubt selected many of the words and scenes from Uncle Vanya that we hear and/or see because they expand the meaning of his film. Two scenes which we hear or see reenacted in the film are from the play’s last act (Act IV), the final one coming from the drama’s very end.

Although those unfamiliar with Chekhov’s play may not realize it, when Kafuku says “I'm 47 years old….,” while sitting in the back of his car, he is repeating words uttered by Vanya in Chekhov’s play. (Kafuku had previously played Vanya in a production of the drama and knows Vanya’s lines by heart.)

The final scene of Uncle Vanya reminds us of Kafuku words to Misaki, which occurred shortly before when he told her, “You and I must keep living like that. We must keep on living.” In Chekhov’s play, one transcript of the final scene is rendered this way. (Note: Since Chekhov wrote in Russian, English translations can vary considerably.)

Vanya: Oh, my child, I am miserable; if you only knew how miserable I am!

Sonya: What can we do? We must live our lives. [A pause] Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender smile—and—we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith. We shall rest. We shall rest.

In the filmscript of Drive My Car the words of this final dialogue are very similar.

Director Hamaguchi is just as—some might say more so—indebted to Japanese writer Haruki Murakami as he is to Chekhov. The title of his film (Drive My Car) is the same as that of a Murakami short story, and it forms the basis of the film. But Hamaguchi also borrows from two other Murakami stories, “Scheherazade” and “Kino.” Mixing elements from all three stories, as well as from Uncle Vanya, is just part of Hamaguchi’s creative process.

In addition to the film’s themes mentioned so far, plus elaborating on those already identified, a few more points need to be made. The words of Kafuku dealing with grief—“We must keep on living”—and of Sonya—“We must live our lives….we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old”—seem to reflect Hamaguchi’s own thinking. They certainly capture the spirit of Chekhov, who bravely coped with tuberculosis and died when he was only 44.

Besides dealing with death, grief, and guilt, several other topics are touched upon in the film. One is marital fidelity and another is the area of human communication and understanding other people. (Incidentally, both subjects were significant in the previous film I reviewed for Hollywood Progressive.)

Oto, the playwright wife of Kafuku, was often unfaithful to him, perhaps partly because her infidelity aided her in the creative writing process. As Kafuku explains to another leading character, Koji Takatsuki, a young actor whom Kafuku had once seen Oto having sex with, “Oto slept with other men. Not just one. Probably with the actors who were cast in the dramas she wrote….She sometimes brought them into our home. Even so, I've never doubted her love for me. There was no doubt.”

But as Kafuku continues explaining to Takatsuki, as they ride in the back of Kafuku’s car, the lack-of-communication problem becomes evident: “Still, she contained within her a spot that I couldn't look into, where something dark swirled.” Takatsuki asks, “Didn't you ever ask her about any of this?” To which Kafuku responds, “What I feared most was losing her. If she found out I knew, we wouldn't have been able to maintain our balance.” But Takatsuki then asks, “Isn't it possible that she wanted you to hear her out?”

Later on Takatsuki says to Kafuku, “But even if you think you know someone well [,] even if you love that person deeply, you can't completely look into that person's heart.” And near the end of the film, the driver Misaki asks, “Mr. Kafuku, about Oto would it be hard for you to accept her, everything about her, as genuine? Maybe there was nothing mysterious about her. Would it be hard to think that she was simply like that? That she loved you dearly and that she sought other men constantly don't seem to contradict each other or sound deceptive to me. Is that strange?”

That we can love someone for a long time and never completely understand them, and at times not communicate with them with 100 percent effectiveness does not seem strange to me—someone who was married for 58 years. To underline Hamaguchi’s concern with communicating and understanding, some of his actors speak in different languages when practicing and performing Uncle Vanya. For example Sonya’s final words to Vanya (quoted above) are rendered by her using Korean sign language, which we the viewers of Drive My Car understand only by the film’s subtitles.

Besides all the points made above, many of which are thought provoking, there is much more that makes the film interesting and enjoyable, including the first-rate acting and beauty of it. And since most of it is set in Hiroshima, which now looks very much a twenty-first century modern city with over 2 million people, I kept thinking back to 1945 and our Atomic Bomb, which killed more than one-third of its approximate 350,000 people.