Books on Film: The Dead

Having recently completed a reread of James Joyce’s Dubliners, I decided to rewatch The Dead, John Huston’s film adaptation of the story of the same name. Although I have seen the film at least twice before and read Dubliners countless times, this is the first time of experiencing them in close proximity to one another. Which makes comparing them considerably easier.

The Dead is the final story in the series of fifteen that make up Dubliners. It is easily the longest of the set, running to more than fifteen thousand words, and revisits many of the same themes found in the rest of the collection. Paralysis. Jealousy. Youthful folly. Alcoholic excess. Simmering resentment. It is considered by many to be one of the greatest short stories ever written.

The 1987 film adaptation of The Dead was the last film completed by director, John Huston, before his death later that year. It is the denouement to a career that spanned forty six years, including such films as, The African Queen (1951), The Misfits (1961), Casino Royale (1967), The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Escape to Victory (1981).

However, it is Huston’s debut feature, The Maltese Falcon (1941) that, for me, remains one of the greatest films ever made. It is a movie so engrained in my consciousness that even when I return to the novel (which I have read almost as many times as Dubliners), I visualise it in black and white, despite the rich palate of colours described by Dashiell Hammett’s prose. Sam Spade’s yellow-grey eyes shine through the greyscale like a character in a Sin City movie.

Old Yellow-Gray Eyes

The Dead is about as far removed from The Maltese Falcon as one can get. The action takes place during a Christmas party attended by the main characters, Gabriel and Greta Conroy. The party is hosted by Gabriel’s aunts, Kate and Julia Morkan. Along with their niece, Mary Jane Morkan, Gabriel refers to the women as The Three Graces.

The party actually takes place on 6 January, the Feast of Epiphany, also known as Little Christmas, or Nollaig na mBan in Gaelic, meaning Women’s Christmas, when the Christmas period was over (6 January is also Twelfth Night) and it was the turn of the women of the household to celebrate.

During Little Christmas, men would take on the duties traditionally assigned to the women in a variation on the Lord of Misrule Christmas traditions, where the masters serve the servants. It should be noted that in neither the story or the film adaptation of The Dead is there much evidence of the male characters taking on these roles, or contributing much to the preparations. They are too absorbed by their own petty concerns.

My 1st copy of Dubliners

On the surface, the story of The Dead is fairly simple. Gabriel and Greta arrive late. Gabriel is to give an after-dinner speech, as he has done at the annual gathering for a number of years. Gabriel works as a teacher and part time journalist. He fusses over the details of his speech, rejecting sections for being too high brow for the tastes of his audience.

Gabriel is teased by Miss Ivors for being a ‘West Briton’, a term of abuse used for those more interested in European rather than Irish culture. She tries to convince him to make “a trip to the west of Ireland.” He refuses. Greta tries to convince him to go, so she can return to Galway, where she grew up, but Gabriel tells her she should go on her own, or with Miss Ivors,  if she so wants.

There is dancing and music recitals. The character, Freddy Malins, shows up drunk, to the chagrin of the hostesses and his mother, who is visiting from Glasgow. Dinner is served and Gabriel gives his speech to universal acclaim.

As the Conways are preparing to leave, Gabriel finds Greta listening to the tenor singer, Bartell D'Arcy, sing ‘The Lass of Aughrim’ (a traditional Scots/ English ballad), as if lost in thought. When he asks here about it at the hotel where they are to spend the night, she tells him about Michael Furey. Furey used to sing ‘The Lass of Aughrim’ for her when she was a girl and they were courting. He died when he was only seventeen. Greta believes he died because of her, after he showed up to her house in the pouring rain on the night before she was due to leave Galway for Dublin. He refused to leave and already being sick, passed away several days later.

Greta becomes distraught as she tells Gabriel about Furey and cries herself to sleep. The story and film end with Gabriel standing by the window as he laments never having loved anyone enough to die for them. Snow is falling outside and Gabriel’s consciousness sweeps across the whole of Ireland, from the ‘dark central plain’ to ‘the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried.’ Gabriel’s inner-monologue ends the film in a voice over largely taken verbatim from the closing words of the story (with changes from the third to first person).

A simple story it might be, but the power and the glory of The Dead and Dubliners in general is often what is left unsaid. What is hinted at and alluded to between the words. It is no wonder Ernest Hemingway adored Dubliners and used the stories as touchstones for his own short fiction. If anyone could rival Joyce in leaving things unsaid, it was surely Hemingway.

However, the film loses some of the subtlety of Joyce’s prose. Which is always the trade off when adapting the written word for the screen. What this means in practice is that the film version contains a lot that is essentially padding to bulk out the story to a running time of eighty minutes (John Huston’s son, Tony, who wrote the script notes that the first draft, an almost verbatim rendering of the story, came in at about a forty five minute runtime). Some of it works and some of it does not.

Watching the film with the story fresh n my mind, the elements I find most superfluous and more than a little hammy are in the treatment of Greta. In the story, Greta is pretty much caught unawares in hearing ‘The Lass of Aughrim’ after so many years. This plummets her into the black mood that renders her mute during their journey back to the hotel. In the film, however, there are several moments where something someone says causes her to remember Furey and primes her for the moment on the stairs. 

Angelica Huston as Greta is fabulous in the role, but I find all the wistful looks a little grating as they lay it on thick for the audience. It’s not like the audience knows what’s going on, unless they are already familiar with the story. This somewhat dilutes the impact of the moment on the stairs.

Moreover, the depiction of the key scene is a bit on the nose with the way Huston is lit. In the story, Gabriel doesn’t recognise his wife for a moment, standing there in the semi-darkness. The film version leaves no-one, not even Gabriel, in any doubt as to who is on the stairs.

Where? There on the stair. Where on the stair? Right there.

The film also alters Miss Ivors reason for leaving. In the story, she leaves before dinner, but no reason is given, other than she feels she has outstayed her welcome. In the film, she is leaving to attend a union meeting, having already confessed to being an Irish nationalist.

Given the time in which the film was made and the febrile political situation in Northern Ireland at the time, as well as the financial support the IRA received from America’s Irish population, this is surely deliberate. A nod to nationalism: Of which, I think it is safe to say, Joyce would not have approved. One has only to read the Cyclops episode of Ulysses to find a clue to his opinion on such matters.

Indeed, there are these odd moments that seem to play into an idealised theme park version of Ireland found in the United States. It’s not quite leprechauns stealing me lucky charms and dying everything green, but the score can’t help but include strains of the kind of diddly-dee ‘Irish music’ you find in many tired, clichéd depictions of Irish life, from John Ford’s The Quiet Man to divers episodes of Star Trek.

The irony that Colm Meaney, who played Chief Miles O’Brien in both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space 9, appears as Raymond Bergin is worth mentioning in passing. The familiar Star Trek trope known as, O’Brien Must Suffer, includes Meaney being made to suffer through many of those tortuously clichéd Star Trek scenes (see The Next Generation episode, Up the Long Ladder, for instance, which is painful to watch).

The Dead is the epitome of refinement by comparison. Meaney’s performance is understated. He is very much a secondary character, but no true Star Trek fan can help but follow him as he dances in circles around the room in the background. As a Joyce and a Trek fan, I am always happy when the two intersect (as with the Deep Space 9, Quark, who, like the fundamental particle, takes his name directly from Finnegans Wake).

Chief (right), what are you doing here?

Mr Grace is the one character added to film who doesn’t appear in Joyce’s story. It has been suggested he was partly included to give him some of Mr Browne’s lines and make the latter  a more overtly comic character. Browne is the only protestant character in the story, which might also have something to do with it, making him more a more scornful character to play to the predominantly Catholic Irish American audience.

Mr Grace performs one of the set piece of the film, a poem he says is called, ‘Broken Vows’ (which facilitates one of Greta’s moments of misty eyed wistfulness). Sean McClory, who played Mr Grace, coincidentally, appeared in The Quiet Man as Owen Glynn.

Another set piece comes when Aunt Julia sings a warbled voiced version of ‘Arrayed for the Bridal’, and the camera sweeps the rooms of the house, alighting on various items, from photos and needlepoint, to vases, candlesticks and porcelain angels.

I feel these are the additions that Joyce would appreciate. Music was always a part of Joyce’s life. He might have been a successful opera singer if he hadn’t chosen writing (and his terrible eyesight hadn’t precluded sight reading). His books are filled to the brim with music and the moments of recital feel as much a nod to Ulyssean episodes like Sirens as anything else. It is easy to see how much John Huston was influenced by Ulysses (his mother smuggled him a copy of the book out of France when it was still banned in the US).

The other main criticism one might make of the film adaption is that it somewhat diminishes Gabriel’s place in the story. He is still the most important character in the film, but Joyce’s story is much more focused upon him. For the most part, he is as much a point of view character as others found in Dubliners (cf. Eveline, After the Race, A Painful Case, etc.). The comic elements around Browne and Malins, as well as the set pieces, defocus Gabriel centrality to a large extent.

However, Greta is much more present in the film version. Despite the hammy elements of her various reminiscences, Angelica Huston’s portrayal makes Greta all the more sensual than the rather staid woman found in Joyce’s story. Joyce wrote better female characters later in his career, most notably Molly Bloom in Ulysses. As Joyce largely based both characters on his wife, Nora Barnacle, it is apt that Huston plays Greta closer to Molly than the actual character in The Dead.

Nora Barnacle

Joyce very much based Gabriel on himself with Gabriel’s cycling trips to the continent to brush up on his French and German. Joyce’s degree was in modern languages (French, German and Italian). He and Nora lived on the continent for all but the first few months of their relationship. Though I can’t quite imagine Joyce on a bicycle. His eyesight was too bad for that.

Donal McCann as Gabriel isn’t very Joyce like. Joyce was tall and skinny. McCann is shorter and stocky. Although both Joyce and McCann died tragically young in their 50s.Yet McCann is perfect in the role and it’s as difficult to imagine Gabriel as anyone else as it is to imagine anyone but Humphrey Bogart being Sam Spade.

It has its issues, but the film version of The Dead is still satisfying to watch. To those of us who read and reread Joyce, study him and learn at his knee and who lament his reputation as being difficult and opaque and not more widely read as a result, any cinematic representation of Joyce’s world is gratifying. It would be nice if someone would produce an anthology from the rest of Dubliners, with different directors tackling one story each. However, it seems unlikely.

So other than Joseph Strick’s 1967 version of Ulysses, which I still haven’t seen, The Dead is about the best we are going to get. Joyceans celebrate Epiphany as the first date in the Joyce calendar and some even hold a recreation of the meal and celebration featured in The Dead. I will settle for reading the story and watching the film.

Then again, I was born on 2 February, which is Candlemass, Groundhog Day, and also James Joyce’a birthday. Which is a pretty good birthday to have. And a damn good celebration.

Other Books on Film

A Scanner Darkly
Drive My Car
Dune

James Joyce, about to perform Dirty Old Town (niche humour)

 

Books on Film: Dune

He is the Kwizatz Haderach 

He is born of Caladan

And will take the Gom Jabbar

He has the power to foresee

Or to look into the past

He is the ruler of the stars.

                             Iron Maiden, To Tame a Land

Dune, as Frank Herbert’s son, Brian, observed, is to science fiction what the Lord of the Rings is to fantasy (Arthur C Clarke agreed with him). And as with Christopher Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings, Brian Herbert continued the Dune books after his father died.

As with Tolkien and fantasy, science fiction existed long before Frank Herbert entered the scene. Yet no writer before or since has done so much to enrich the genre. Every futuristic film or TV series released since 1965 carries at least trace amounts of Dune DNA. George Lucas ‘borrowed’ so heavily from Dune and other sci-fi worlds for his first Star Wars film that Frank Herbert created a tongue in cheek organisation called, We’re Too Big to Sue George Lucas.

Tatooine, the Jedi, the Sith, the Empire and Imperial forces, as well as the Pit of Salaccc (a barely disguised sand worm) are all repurposed elements from the first Dune novel. Even more of it was apparently included in the original drafts for A New Hope, including reference to a shipment of Spice and liberal use of Imperial Houses, a la House Atreides.

The idea of imperial houses did eventually find its way into the various incarnations of Star Trek, through the Klingon Empire. There would be no House of Mogh, Martok or Duras (to say nothing of the House of Quark) without the influence of Dune. Moreover, the Klingon language draws significantly from the influence Arabic as used by Herbert in his world building depictions of the Fremen and their desert culture.

Star Wars notwithstanding, various attempts have been made to bring Dune to the screen, big and small, over the years. Before Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 film covering the first half of the novel (Part 2 is due for release in 2023), there was David Lynch’s 1984 big screen adaptation, as well as the miniseries made by the Sci-Fi Channel in 2000. Both fail to do justice to the book. The Lynch film is a mess, partly because the studio imposed its own edit on the film (though personally I find most David Lynch productions to be equally incoherent), partly because it was made to conform to a standard of 1980s sci-fi films (compare Lynch’s Dune with Blade Runner, The Terminator, or Return of the Jedi, for instance, not to mention later films like Robocop). 

The ‘84 film, however, is a masterpiece compared to the version made by the Sci-Fi Channel at the turn of the millennium. While it manages to stick pretty closely to the plot of the book, it fails in almost every other regard. Despite a number of accomplished actors lending their considerable talents to the production, the whole thing plays out like an amateur dramatic society’s attempt to act out the novel while suffering through a series of hallucinations brought on by food poisoning. It doesn’t help that the sets and special effects are kitsch as kitsch can be. Like off cuts rejected by Babylon 5 for looking too cheap. It manages to make the Star Wars prequels for a moment (and only a moment) look professional and well thought out, rather than another fevered dream created by someone who’d apparently never seen the original films.

All of which makes the prospect of creating a new version of Dune daunting, if not a little insane. This book, which many consider unfilmable (though come on, it’s not Ulysses or Infinite Jest), has resisted cinematic fidelity for more than half a century. Why should it reveal its true self now?

Yet this version (at least the first part released so far) is a masterpiece and an instant classic of science fiction cinema. There are some changes to the book, which cannot be avoided in lifting a book from the page, but it hits all the main beats of the original narrative and far more is retained than one would expect. It is, for instance, a minor plot point that Paul Atreides mother, Jessica, is not married to his father, Leto. That fact though is included in the dialogue despite making little difference to the plot one way or another. It is such minor attention to detail that makes this seem like a film made with fans in mind. It’s possible to watch the movie without having read the book, but this feels, finally, like a love letter to Dune and its readers. Though like 2001: A Space Odyssey, a reading of the novel helps to flesh out the film.

While the 1984 version might have been weighed down by contemporary 80s science fiction, the 2021 update instead luxuriates in its homage to science fiction and fantasy from the last half century. The opening scenes on the planet Caladan seem to nod to the landscapes of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films and to the TV adaptation of Game of Thrones. The sleek, tall ships that land on Arrakis (aka Dune), clearly take their influence from the Imperial craft found in Star Wars (Dune perhaps returning the favour and stealing back from George Lucas). And who can witness the central structure of the Atreides stronghold on Arrakis and not see the Tyrell Corporation pyramid from Blade Runner rendered in sandstone?

Beyond even cinematic homage, however, are the references to recent world history. A Hollywood blockbuster about an imperial power overtaking stewardship of a desert world and its Middle Eastern inspired inhabitants can hardly avoid weaving into its tapestry elements of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. House Atreides brings with it an invading force and if the stronghold is not actually under siege (not by the indigenous population at least), the obvious analogue is with the American Green Zone established in Iraq following the 2003 invasion.

Again, it is hardly important to the plot, but the attention to detail contributes to the world building and continues a fine tradition in science fiction of taking contemporary human concerns and transporting them to a sufficient remove in space or time so we can consider their implications from a distance. Even cinematic war tropes are threaded in, with Stellan Skarsgård’s portrayal of Baron Harkonnen borrowing so heavily from Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, you expect him to moan, “The horror.” at any moment.

Dune is perhaps more depressingly relevant than ever, written as it was by a man concerned with the environmental issues of his day. The desert might be seen as a metaphor for the slow erosion of the natural world. Even today, we see China building defences to prevent the encroachment of the Gobi desert into its towns and cities and sub-Saharan countries planting acres of trees along the desert for the selfsame reason. While the omnipresent threat of nuclear war might have abated somewhat since the 1960s, climate change is just as real and disrespectful of public opinion or political bargaining. Dune and Arrakis are manifestations of a world reclaimed by nature and rendered all but uninhabitable without survival equipment. We should heed the warning, but probably we never will.

The inclusion of many actors of colour and of Middle Eastern heritage to the cast of this Dune is important, though I’m sure the usual suspects were crying, “Woke!” like a nervous tick. Yet when we consider one of Herbert’s influences for the plot of Dune was the life of T E Lawrence, particularly the film, Lawrence of Arabia, where most of the Arabian characters are played by white actors in black face (most notably Alex Guinness, who would, of course, go on to play Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars), it is a step in the right direction. I always think we should take a tally of all the non Caucasian people who have been played by white actors in the history of movies, TV and theatre and when that amount falls into arrears with all the white characters played by people of colour, then the anti-woke brigade can have cause to complain. Even then, we should probably ignore them.

The Villeneuve adaptation isn’t entirely perfect. Jessica is a little too passive a character in the first half of the film and unlike the ideal for a witch of the Bene Gesserit. Paul likewise is a little too Emo. Though as he is fifteen in the book, his portrayal by Timothée Chalamet is perhaps a closer approximation to a sulky teenager than either Kyle MacLachlan or Alex Newman in the film and TV series respectively. Chalamet seems closer to the character described in the novel, although in reality he is only the same age MacLachlan and Newman were when they played the role.

No film is ever going to be an exact replica of the book. Nor should it be. Screen and book have different grammar and syntax associated with them. Like the difference between mainstream music and jazz. Though in rereading the novel, Frank Herbert was obviously influenced by the visual language of cinema. Dune is a book that moves from scene to scene more like a film than the fluid narrative structure of many novels, where one chapter blends seamlessly into the next. Dune often jumps in place and time with barely a mention of what happened in the interim. Like Ishmael’s journey from Manhattan to New Bedford, that is dispensed with in a sentence in the second chapter of Moby Dick[1], so House Atreides are on Caladan one moment and already arrived at Arrakis in the very next chapter.

It is therefore odd to think how long Dune has resisted a truly faithful big screen adaptation, given its cinematic construction. We can only hope this year’s sequel sticks the landing as gracefully as Part 1 managed the takeoff.

I am perhaps lucky in the sense that I have avoided watching previous versions of Dune until very recently and only after seeing the Villeneuve film for the first time. Both the Recency Fallacy and First Love Fallacy come into play. There are no previous versions to erase from my memory. This version of Dune is the definitive one. All other versions are poor imitations. Vive la Villeneuve. 

Read More (Books on Film Series)

A Scanner Darkly

Drive My Car

 

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[1] “Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford.”

 

Books on Film: Drive My Car

 *spoilers*

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 film, Drive My Car, is based on the Haruki Murakami short story of the same name. Actually, the film takes sections from three Murakami stories included in the 2014 collection, Men Without Women (Onna no inai otokotachi). Elements from Scheherazade and Kino complete the triptych.

The original story is no longer than forty pages and yet the film adaptation runs to nearly three hours. So how much of the film is derived from its source material? The short answer is, not much. Yet, as we shall see, what Drive My Car lacks in fidelity of translation, it makes up for by creating a cinematic landscape faithful and familiar to much of Murakami’s writing.

Murakami’s version of Drive my Car can be summarised as follows: Stage actor, Kafuku, is forced to hire a driver to take to and from rehearsals of The Cherry Orchard after being convicted of drunk driving. His driver is 24 year old Misaki Watar. During the journey, Kafuku practices his lines by way of a tape recording and tells Misaki about his wife, who died of cancer many years before.

Kafuku’s wife had had a string of affairs during their marriage. After her death, he befriends her final lover in hope of finding a weakness by which he can emotionally torture the man. Yet he comes to like him and after six months of drinking together in bars, Kafuku breaks off the friendship. Watar tells him that his wife’s affairs probably had nothing to do with her love for him one way or another. The story ends with Kafuku falling asleep on the back seat of the car.

 

The most glaring difference between story and film is that the story takes place almost exclusively in the car. Other than breaking off halfway through to tell in flashback the barroom meetings between Kafuku and Takatsuki, the action is confined to the inside of Kafuku’s Saab. Despite retaining the title of the story, the scenes inside the car are only one small part of the film.

Indeed, it is more than forty five minutes before Misaki makes an appearance. The first act focuses on Kafuku relationship with his wife, Oto, leading up to her demise. The cause of her death is changed. Three quarters of an hour elapse before the opening credits roll (delayed credits are apparently a trend in cinema at the moment). A different rationale is presented for Kafuku being driven to rehearsals, having to do with insurance premiums on the production, of which he is the director. The rehearsal tape playing in the car had been recorded by his late wife.

The film extends on the short story by drawing the rehearsal sessions into the action. It is a multi-lingual production, employing actors from China, Korea and Japan, including a Korean actor who speaks only in sign language. Moreover, Oto’s lover is brought into the present day, being cast in the part of Boris. As much as in the story, his inclusion in the production is an act of masochism on the part of Kafuku.

Takatsuki is younger than the Murakami version. More brash and arrogant. He is the one who instigates the drinking sessions with Kafuku, making the scenes more combative than in print. Kafuku is reticent to engage Takatsuki and give him the acting advice he craves. He is more generous with his direction towards others in the production.

Kafuku had walked in on Takatsuki and his wife in bed together, which is the main element taken from the story, Kino. Although unlike Kino, Kafuku leaves without being seen by the lovers and never reveals to his wife what he saw. Later we hear Oto had many affairs, but unlike the story it is unclear whether this is true or whether he tells Takatsuki this to wound the man and reduce the importance of their relationship in his mind.

Takatsuki has his revenge of sorts on Kafuku. Like the woman known only as Scheherazade in the story of the same name, Oto tells her lovers stories during and after sex. One of the final stories she tells to Kafuku is unfinished and almost identical to the main one Scheherazade tells. How Scheherazade broke into the house of a boy she was at school with. How she stole small items from his bedroom and left things like tampons hidden in his drawers.

Oto tells Kafuku she could never finish the story and yet Takatsuki knows how it ends, further highlighting the intensity of her relationship with the latter over the former. Yet the story does not end in the way it does in the book. The denouement is more intense and other worldly. It too is culled from another Murakami book, but at the moment I can’t remember which one.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Kafuku and Misaki evolves throughout the film. Like the story, Misaki is roughly the same age as the daughter Kafuku and Oto had had together but who had died very young and been the cause of their estrangement to one another for many years. Kafuku sees Misaki as a daughter figure. Misaki’s backstory is filled out to give her a character arc that intersects with Kafuku, both of them believing themselves to be responsible for the deaths of loved ones. The film’s final act sees them take a road trip to the remains of the house in which Misaki grew up.

Much of the core of the story is scooped out and refilled for the film, but this is fine. In writing a short story, a writer has to limit themselves as to the scope of what is included. The more complicated the narrative threads, the harder they are to all pull together into a tight weave. Although Murakami’s stories are often ambiguous, there still has to be enough from which the reader can draw their own meaning and conclusions. Drive My Car as a story is self-contained and narrow in scope. This is in contrast to Scheherazade and Kino, which are each opened ended and unresolved.

In extending the story to three hours, the details and stakes of the narrative necessarily have to be changed in order to fill a three hour run time. Therefore much of the detail and minutiae of the plot is altered. Yet that which is introduced is mostly all in keeping with the themes one finds running through Murakami’s fiction.

The only obvious omission is the supernatural elements that are a feature of much of what Murakami writes. There are other worldly threads within the film, but these are restricted to the stories Oto tells her lovers. The action we see is entirely routed in the real world. It is therefore more like Norwegian Wood, which is the only Murakami novel to date which is entirely based in reality.

Kafuku is a markedly different character in the film as compared to the story; more morose and isolated. Yet in many ways he is a more typical Murakami archetype than the Kafuku found in Murakami’s own story. Misaki is also given more pathos than the pencil-drawn outline of the story. Her fleshed out film persona is a combination of the tragic and the self-possessed women found in Murakami’s novels.

The film is, at times, glacially slow. This will inevitably put some people off watching it, coupled with its three hour run time and being, for the most part, subtitled. Personally, I found it a peasant change to watch something shawn of all noticeable special effects. As a sci-fi fan, special effects are fine as long as they are used to advance a narrative rather than replace it. Sadly, too many blockbuster movies these days seem to resemble a video game on demo mode.

Drive My Car is a film for Murakami fans, but it is also a film for readers in general. A film for people who enjoy a story well told. A story revealed through character and the things that are understood but left unspoken. As story where the viewer is left to draw their own conclusions.

Indeed the final scene of the film, like any good Murakami story, is ambiguous (although a little digging helps glean a few details that might be missed by a western audience). The main threads have been pulled together and tied off. Chekhov’s gun has been fired. Yet like Scheherazade’s truncated tales, there is always a little narrative left over for another day.

Read More

Reading Murakami (or What I Think About When I Read Haruki Murakami) 

Books on Film: A Scanner Darkly