If 2020 is the world of "Parasitic High" director Bong Joon-ho, and 2022 is the era of the rise of Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, after last year's "Chance and Imagination" won the Berlin Film Festival Jury Award, and was selected by many film critics into the top ten films of the year, "On the Car" not only received praise after being released at the Cannes Film Festival, but also strongly impacted this year's Oscars, including best picture, director and other 4 major awards, what kind of charm does this film have?
Analyze the character characteristics and plot twists in "On the Car", and experience the theme that the director wants to express.
Actor role
"On the Car" by Hidetoshi Nishijima, the protagonist Iefuku is a stage director who is also an actor, usually working hard, although busy, often need to perform everywhere, but he and Kirishima Reika played by the screenwriter wife Yin live a happy and happy life, but also hope that the two can be together forever. However, one day, the family welfare flight was postponed for some reason, and when he returned home, he found that his wife was having an affair. In order not to destroy this precious marriage, he chose to keep the secret in his heart, found a hotel, pretended that he had traveled to a foreign country, and normally communicated with his wife by video.
However, this marriage changed after the sudden death of his wife with a cerebral hemorrhage, leaving the family with nothing but love for her, only the regret of infidelity to his wife and the fact that he could not tell the eternal separation of heaven and a video tape that he cherished quite much. "In the Car" begins with a 40-minute opening story about the daily interaction between the protagonist Jiafu and his wife, from love, discussing the script of the stage play together, worshiping the dead daughter together, to the care given by his wife when he was involved in a car accident, although he has been married for more than ten years, he can still feel the deep emotions between them.
The title of the film is taken from "Driving My Car", which literally translates to "Driving My Car", "ドライ・マイ・カー", two years after the story of the movie "In the Car" began in the beginning of the film, Iefuku was invited to Hiroshima as the director of a stage play, and due to his glasses illness, the troupe forced him to hire a driver, Mishaki, because driving was the time he always used his wife's recording of "Uncle Vanya" to practice performances and lines, so Iefuku also asked the crew to help him find a hotel farther away from the theater. Therefore, the driver disrupted his original plan and pace, and also made Jiafu feel repulsive and unregulated.
However, with several times, Iefu gradually became accustomed to the existence of Mishaki, and also let "In the Car" focus the story on the process of interacting with the driver and the actors he selected when he rode to work and rehearsed the play, not only constructing the personality background of each character with a large number of dialogues, taking the audience into their hearts, but also through the relationship between the characters, so that the protagonist Jiafu, who was deeply trapped in the shadow of his wife's death, could change his original thinking angle.
Uncle Vanya in the car
Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya is definitely the audience that runs through the entire film "In the Car"
Whether "in the car" or "in the theater", the film occupies a considerable amount of space in the film, and the stage play performed by actors from different national backgrounds in Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, and sign language is not only the deepest connection between Jiafu and his deceased wife, but also the protagonist of the play, "Vanya", which corresponds to the encounter and state of mind experienced by Jiafu as a director, which has a profound impact on him that is difficult to ignore.
Therefore, using drama to reflect life, "In the Car" takes the protagonist Jiafu to direct the multilingual adaptation of "Uncle Vanya" as the main axis of the whole film, from the initial casting, reading the lines through the tape on the car, the sparks stirred by the crowd during rehearsals, and the final stage performance, all of which allow the characters to find answers from the text and understand the unknown side of his wife's voice, and gradually open their hearts to face the psychological trauma that has plagued him for the past two years.
Plot twist
The relationship between the husband and wife of the protagonist of "In the Car" is quite charming, both close and somewhat distant, even if they are very in love, but the sound will have relations with other men behind her husband's back, and this has become a lingering knot in the family's happiness. It wasn't until he learned in the car that koshi, a young actor who had a crush on his wife and had a relationship with her, learned another side of his wife that he didn't know about him, that the situation began to change.
Perhaps more than ten years after marriage, the protagonist of "In the Car" still has so much incomprehension about the pillow people who live together day and night, but even so, we still have to be true to our hearts, understand the independence and complexity of each different individual, and accept it in a feasible way. That is to say, if you want to know a person in depth, the first thing to do is to face it squarely and take yourself seriously.
Short stories
"On the Car" once again shows director Ryusuke Hamaguchi's fascination with "story" and extremely clever choreography. Inspired by the relationship between the protagonist's wife, Yin, the film tells the story of a schoolgirl who sneaks into the home of a boy she has a crush on when no one is home during the day. Every time she came to his room, the girl would steal something from here and leave behind her own small object as a souvenir to prove her existence.
According to what Jiafu, the protagonist of "In the Car", heard, this story was originally broken when the girl comforted herself one day because she could not resist her inner desires, but found that someone had returned home early. However, his wife's lover, Gong Shi, told Jiafu in the car about the follow-up development of this story. It turned out that the person who opened the door and went home was a thief like the girl, who saw that the girl on the bed wanted to violate her, but in turn was killed by the girl.
Lamprey
However, no one gave any reaction to the thief's body left by the girl in the boy's home, the only difference was that there was an extra camera in front of the boy's house the next day, which made the girl feel confused and contradictory, not only doubting her own existence, but also feeling guilty about the killing. The story of "In the Car" revolves around the value of desire and survival, and I can't help but think of the second paragraph of "Chance and Imagination", "Open Doors".
The wife said that the girl's past life was a "lamprey eel", a fish that would use a "mouthpart" to adsorb on other fish to obtain the nutrients it needed. In the end, the girl in the story of "In the Car" is actually the embodiment of his wife, and the boy is naturally the protagonist who pretends to be indifferent to the discovery of his wife's affair, which confuses the girl. Maybe he did this to protect the marriage, but how did she feel from his wife's point of view? In the day and night by the woman-led love is very different, under the courtesy and coldness of respecting each other, is the love between two people still exists?
Let go of reconciliation
The protagonist's inner demon lies in the fact that he did not go home earlier and missed the golden time to save his wife, but in fact, his real fault is to choose to ignore the existence of the "thief", that is, the "people and things" that intervened in the happy marriage between the two. Whether it is the wife's lover, the fact that she is having an affair, or the relationship between the two people that has become somewhat cold for many reasons, the wife feels pain before she dies, and after her death, through the car full of memories of the two people and the audio tape left behind, it is passed on to the protagonist in another form.
Therefore, just as the protagonist Iefu and the driver Mishaki, from the original formal and distanced working relationship, gradually changed to sharing each other's secrets, pouring out sad past events, confessing their mistakes, in the end, the protagonist of "In the Car" can do the same as the actor Koshi said in the car, in the end, he can only accept these lies, betrayals, and the fact that he has lost his daughter and wife.
Movie theme
Although it is nearly 3 hours long, "In the Car" is in a calm pace, making a detailed exposition and description of the characters and story, and the theme that director Ryusuke Hamaguchi wants to convey is actually very simple. Just like in the face of extreme disappointment and extreme pessimism, people still have to live tenaciously, after trying to understand from other angles, forgive others, forgive themselves, let go of those complicated thoughts that make people feel regret, and remember all the good things that have been experienced.
Perhaps the mystery left by the wife is not a mystery at all, she is deeply in love with her husband, but also has relationships with other men, this is not a lie, there is no conflict between the two. Although "In the Car" is played by Hidetoshi Nishijima as the protagonist, the driving force behind the trauma, awakening and reconciliation brought to him, whether it is a wife, a sign language actor, or a driver in the car, almost all of them are women who have always been very good at shaping and depicting the director, through them to awaken the more superficial, self-centered men. In fact, the source of the pain is not what secrets the girl hides, but sees it as a problem and constantly wants to explore and understand herself.
The meaning of the ending
We have all spent many long days and nights, and now we should patiently take on the many trials that fate has brought us. Therefore, watching the protagonist finally follow the driver Misaki to her hometown of Hokkaido, where she grew up, the director also made a rather perfect ending for the movie "In the Car" with the two of them facing the shadow of inner trauma together. The only way to look at the sadness of the past with a smile, and to face your future life journey with a more open mind, and to meet the bright future with the people around you.
I really like the final ending of "In the Car", which seems bland but gives a complete account of everything. The protagonist Jiafu gave the car that imprisoned him to Misaki, and Misaki also came to Korea from Japan to live, raised a dog, treated the scars on his face, and the two people walked out of the haze of the past after healing each other, although they did not know what the future would be, through reconciliation with their own inner trauma, they ushered in a new life.
Film review conclusion
There is no doubt that "On the Car" once again shows the unique temperament of Hamaguchi Ryusuke's film, adapted from the novel of Haruki Murakami, which not only has a different taste from the previous "Burning Love" directed by Lee Cangdong of South Korea, but also takes the character's contradiction and confusion about their own identity as the core, under the psychological trauma of each person, by going deep into the various trivial daily life of their lives, taking the audience from their interaction with each other, finding their own position in each intimate relationship, and facing the way of loss and parting.
The director will set the story stage of "In the Car" in Hiroshima for no reason, watching the two walk to the beach near the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, with Supporting Characters from Various Countries such as Taiwanese actor Yuan Ziyun and South Korea's Park Youlin, and also pulling the entire film's pattern from the individual to the height of nationality and historical scars, so as to further deepen the theme of reconciliation. Carrying the past, present and future, Ryusuke Hamaguchi is absolutely deserved to be able to enter the Oscars with a Japanese movie in "In the Car" this time.