Drive My Car – 8.5

The three hours address, in turn, three separate relationships: Kafuku and his wife; Kafuku and Takatsuki, the reckless young actor; Kafuku and his 23-year-old driver. None is resolved. Hidetoshi Nishijima  as Kafuku experiences one intense emotion after another with hardly a tremor’s difference in his expression. A Buddhist upbringing, perhaps? In any case, his face fills the screen and is always welcome – compare him to Benedict Cumberbatch in Power of the Dog, a similarly powerful and thought-provoking film. Both left me with questions: what did this mean? did this make sense? what didn’t I understand? The character of the driver was, to me, unique in film: a leading lady without good looks who had to be drawn into the story yet ended up as the last word. The pacing reminded me of Noh theater and the framing of Kurosawa. Although I’ve seen Uncle Vanya twice in the last four years I can’t say I mined the depths of those connections. The secondary characters, especially the Korean dramaturge and his wife, were wonderful.