At the beginning of each year, it is the lively awards season in the film industry. Despite the continuous epidemic this year, new films have frequently jumped and changed their files, but various film awards are still in full swing. Among the many hits of this awards season, there is one Japanese film that stands out. This is "Driving My Car", which just received four nominations for best picture, best director, best international film and best adapted screenplay at the 94th Academy Awards just a few days ago. It also won the 79th Golden Globe Award for Best Non-English Film and last year's Cannes Film Festival for Best Screenplay, as well as a host of film awards. It has a taste that competes with the Korean movie "Parasite" from two years ago.
Such a hot film, I will not miss it. So, I tried my best to find out. It was based on the short story of the same name by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.
Stage actor and director Jia Fu accidentally witnesses the affair of the playwright's wife Yin. But he chose to avoid it, always unwilling to communicate with his wife. As a result, Yin unfortunately died of cerebral hemorrhage.
Two years later, Iefuku was invited to Hiroshima to direct Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya. There, he met two people who finally impressed him. One is the taciturn female driver Tori arranged for him by the inviting party, and the other is the wife's affair lover Takatsuki.
Tori was born in Hokkaido, the same age as Iefuku's daughter. She has learned to drive since junior high school, picking up and dropping off her mother, who works at a Sapporo nightclub every day. Because her mother was going to sleep in the car and wake her up to be beaten, Dori's car drove fast and steady. Takatsuki is a young and promising actor who once played the main role in a play written by music, and this time he accidentally came to Hiroshima to play Uncle Vanya in the play.
During the rehearsal, Kafu discovers that Takatsuki does admire and love his wife, Yin, but Takatsuki does not love Takatsuki, but uses him as a tool to inspire. Yin is accustomed to telling his own creative inspiration story after making love. Takatsuki is one of the objects of her storytelling. Takatsuki's words awakened Jiafu: If you really want to observe a person, then the only option is to face and look at yourself deeply. Jiafu realizes that he may have misunderstood his wife.
Therefore, on the bus to Hokkaido, Iefuku deeply reflected on himself, admitting that his avoidance killed his wife. Dori also told Jiafu that when the mudslide collapsed the family's house, she did not rescue her in time because she hated her mother, and allowed her to die under the rubble. A husband who has lost his wife and a daughter who has lost his mother are redeemed from the ruins of Hokkaido.
The story is based on two short stories from Haruki Murakami's collection of short stories, Men Without Women. The story of Kafu, Takatsuki, and Dori comes from Driving My Car, and the story telling after sex comes from Yamaruzod (yes, the yamaruzod who tells the story in One Thousand and One Nights). Then, director Ryusuke Hamaguchi said from the novel "Driving My Car" to perform "Uncle Vanya", pulling out a complete rehearsal and performing the plot of "Uncle Vanya". It can be said that the film comes from the novel, but it has completely exceeded the original meaning of the novel, and has become a work of emotional suspicion and introspection between adults.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi made two interesting attempts in "Driving My Car": One is to use the process of rehearsing "Uncle Vanya" to reflect the changes in the mentality of the actors. The stacking of plays within a play makes the character's heart more clearly externalized. The second is to make full use of sound means to shape characters. Yin recorded a box of lines from "Uncle Vanya" for her husband, allowing him to become familiar with the plot on the road. After Yin's death, Jiafu has been listening to this cassette tape in the car, as if his wife is nearby. Lee Yong-eun, a deaf-mute girl from South Korea who plays Sonia, performs in a mute language, showing a state where silence is better than sound at this time. Coupled with the dialogue of the Chinese in the crew, people can see the various barriers between people.
I like drama very much, so I think the use of the way of play and the means of sound are very interesting, so that the film gets rid of the thinness of the short story, and is richer and thicker. However, specific to this "Driving My Car", it is obviously used in the wrong place.
The first is that this kind of drama, each performed in one language, simply does not work. Drama is the art of language, where expressions and forms serve the performance of lines. It is obviously impossible to perform on the same stage in Japanese, English, Chinese, Filipino and even dumb languages. If you can't understand each other's words, how can you communicate? This is obviously a dream imagined by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
The second is that the "Uncle Vanya" segment shown in the film is too far away from the spirit of Chekhov's original work. Fortunately, more than 5 months ago, I just watched the drama film "Uncle Vanya" performed at the West End Theatre in London, and revisited Chekhov's script, and I have some understanding of this stage masterpiece. The tragedy of Vanya in the play is the disappointment of her brother-in-law Serebryakov and his new wife, Yelena, while Sonia is an angelic girl who believes in the innocence and ordinaryness of the future. These two characters, as well as the other characters in the play, are completely at odds with the estrangement, suspicion, and understanding between people that Drive My Car is about. In particular, the ending of "Uncle Vanya" performed on the stage at the end of the movie is ironic. Sonia, vanya's niece, could hold Vanya's head like both a mother and a wife, and draw that famous monologue in dumb language?
Finally, and more importantly, the pain of the man who lost his woman that "Drive My Car" exudes is incredible. Jiafu loves his wife. After witnessing his wife's affair, he could not believe it or communicate, and wandered outside until late at night before returning home, missing the best time to rescue his wife. After that, he indulged in his wife's voice and could not extricate himself, and did not dare to play Uncle Vanya again, and after seeing Takatsuki, he wanted to find the truth, but he was unexpectedly intimidated by Takatsuki's words. After learning the truth, he was ashamed and burst into tears. But I have never been able to identify with such emotions. Regardless of whether the strange habit of telling stories of creative inspiration after sex is reasonable, it is unacceptable to recognize and sympathize with such a woman who casually sleeps with people.
Haruki Murakami's "Men Without Women" includes 7 of his short stories. Chinese translator Lin Shaohua wrote in the preface to the translation: Although the title of the book is literally translated as "men without women", after reading through, I feel that "men who have lost women" are closer to it in content. "No woman" means maybe not in the first place, but the men in the book aren't. The 7 short stories are all about the disappearance of women, and the men who lose women are all kinds of pain, unbearable, repentance, and even death. Some people may like this kind of emotion, but I don't think so.
In our world, men and women need each other and don't need each other, and the specifics can only vary from person to person. There are men who are indispensable to women, but there are also men who do not need women. A person like Jiafu who suffers so much from losing his wife is just a small child. His pain I thought was not worth mentioning.
Don't be superstitious about the Oscars, Cannes, or the Golden Globes. What they hold in the sky is not necessarily a fine product.