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