Drive My Car: A Story of Communication, Miscommunication, and Transformation

By Jiwon Lee

“But why?” was the number one most common response I was faced with when I told people my favorite Oscar movie of the year is Drive My Car (2021). I have always been too self-conscious to delve into my spiel on this masterpiece amidst a quick coffee chat and was forced to give a lame answer such as “I just liked it.” So today, I will use my privilege as a staff writer of Spotlight to provide my two-thousand-word-long response to the question. Big spoiler alert for anyone who has not yet watched Drive My Car (if you haven’t watched it, you better do it now, it’s on HBO Max, but you should really watch it in a theater). 

Drive My Car is certainly an eccentric film especially compared to other star-studded Oscar nominees that offered mind-blowing cinematography or a Beyonce soundtrack. Drive My Car is merely — as a friend of mine put it — people talking with each other in a car for three hours. Yet, the beauty of this piece lies in all these “talks” — after all, film is a form of audio-visual storytelling. Uncanny pillow talk, Russian play dialogue, all the way to existential conversations in the car all add up to portray the journey of a man who transforms from a constant state of miscommunication to genuine communication. 

Miscommunication  

The film opens with the protagonist Yusuke Kafuku and his wife Oto Kafuku having sex. Yet, something feels strangely off about this sex scene; the sex between the husband and wife is not sex of physical pleasure but of a strange conversation, or more specifically, Oto’s monologue about a story. Oto tells the story of a girl who sneaks into her male classmate Yamaga’s bedroom during the day, leaving her belongings behind and in turn, taking Yamaga’s things. Despite the girl’s strange actions, she is a girl of principle — refusing to masturbate in Yamaga’s room despite her strong urge to do so. Oto adds that this has to do with the girl’s past life as a noble lamprey who refused to suck on other fish to survive and eventually died. 

Oto’s story is a symbolic story about herself. We later find out that Oto has had affairs with other men for many years without telling Yusuke. The story of the girl’s twisted trips to Yamaga’s reflects Oto’s guilt over her affair. Yet, just like how the girl refused to ever cross her line and masturbate, the affairs were never about sexual pleasure to Oto. It was a reflection of Oto’s desire to connect with someone, somehow — as Oto has long failed to do so with her husband ever since the death of their young daughter. Just like the noble lamprey, she never opened up her heart to others and simply swayed back and forth in the water of fiction. Oto’s “oto” (sound) is buried underwater, her desperate movements to communicate her feelings only resulting in the slightest ripple of the surface. Oto continues the story, saying that when someone comes into the house, the girl is actually glad that her crime can finally be put to a stop, and she can finally escape the fate of her prior life. As if to reflect this, the next day, Oto asks her husband for a talk after his work. 

Yet, Yusuke avoids — perhaps denies — this conversation. When Oto asks about the later part of the story she told during their sex, Yusuke lies by saying that he does not remember despite the fact he is seen watching a video of lamprey on his laptop. It is later revealed that Yusuke spent the day driving around in his car because he was afraid the conversation with Oto would change their marriage. Yusuke’s favorite activity in his car is talking with his wife. Yusuke plays a tape recording of his wife reading his lines to him and responds to it to practice his lines. In his red (the color of passion) car, Yusuke converses with a fictional version of his wife, ironically, while avoiding a real conversation with his wife at home. Yusuke’s awareness of his wife’s affair, yet his desire to avoid a conversation about it is reflected in his glaucoma, which the doctor explains to Yusuke as a loss of vision that “does not affect daily life.” While it has seemingly not affected his daily life, Yusuke is blind to the needs of his wife, the needs of himself, and the miscommunication between the two of them. Glaucoma ultimately prevents Yusuke from driving his car — his place of intimate passion and comfort with his own perception of his wife. The hour-long prologue ends with Oto’s death, which could have been prevented if Yusuke had come home earlier to talk to her. Now, neither of them will ever get a chance to have a real conversation. 

Communication 

If Oto and Yusuke’s story showed two people constantly communicating — having sex, talking in the car, talking on Skype — yet never really communicating, the rest of the film portrays true communication in unconventional ways. We can, for instance, turn to Yusuke’s rendition of Uncle Vanya, which features actors who all speak different languages. One of the most beautiful scenes of the film features an actress speaking Mandarin and another using sign language, yet, the scene is packed with so much emotion that their embrace at the end makes you want to cry out loud. 

We also meet the Korean couple Yoon-soo and his wife Yoo-na — the actress in Yusuke’s play who uses sign language. Yoon-soo is the foil to Yusuke. Unlike Yusuke who has done everything he can to avoid real communication with his wife, Yoon-soo has put everything into communicating with his wife Yoo-na. In fact, Yoon-so tells Yusuke:

“I could listen to her like a hundred people. I felt that I’m the only one who could support her.” 

We fathom just how much effort Yoon-soo put into connecting with Yoo-na as Yoon-soo, in addition to speaking Korean, English, and Japanese, took time to be fluent in sign language, so he can be like “a hundred people” worth of human connection to his wife. Yoo-na, like her husband, tells Yusuke that despite her inability to speak, “[she] can see and hear and that allows [her] to understand more than others.” The foil couple to the Kafukus depicts the irony of communication in our modern times. Despite the many words that pass between us, how much of it is real communication?  

Transformation 

Yusuke’s spark of eventual transformation is ignited by the character Takatsuki — one of the actors Oto had an affair with. Just as Yusuke allowed the affair to continue without bringing it up, even years later, Yusuke gives the role of Vanya, which he used to play, to Takatsuki instead of playing the part himself. Takatsuki, however, is unable to act out the role because he is too broken of a person. 

“I’m empty.” 

Takatsuki is a person who has long fed off of Oto’s silent underwater world of fiction. Takatsuki tells Yusuke that he loved to act out Oto’s scripts because the text seemed to have spoken to him, unlike his current text Uncle Vanya, which he just can’t seem to connect with. Takatsuki throws himself into situations of miscommunication, exemplified by how he offered to lend an ear to the Taiwanese actress, only to end up having sex with her without really talking with her. After years of drowning in ungenuine conversations and sex, Takatsuki has lost himself, as seen in his vampire-like hatred for others taking pictures of him. He hates the idea of seeing himself. Before Takatsuki’s ultimate downfall, however, he shares a realization that struck him with Yusuke:

“Even if you love that person deeply you can’t completely look into their heart…but if you put in enough effort, you should be able to look into your own heart pretty well…if you really want to look into someone the only option is to look at yourself squarely and clearly. That’s what I think.” 

Yusuke does just this with the help of Misaki Watari, his young driver. Misaki, who was born in the same year as Yusuke’s deceased daughter, acts as Yusuke’s reflection of himself and his marriage with Oto. Misaki and Yusuke both “killed” a loved one — Yusuke let his wife die and Misaki let her mother die. Misaki and Yusuke only had the chance to communicate affection with their loved ones through the world of fiction — Yusuke in Oto’s fictional stories and Misaki with her mother’s alter ego ‘Saki’ who, unlike Misaki’s mother, was a friend to Misaki. Misaki, in short, carries the same pain as Yusuke and was born in the year when Yusuke’s pain began, symbolizing, in many ways, a reflection of Yusuke’s inner self. 

After the two of them share their pain with each other, they drive together to Misaki’s old home. When they arrive, they are greeted by a white world of snow, conveying newness and rebirth. More importantly, their arrival is completely silent. After Misaki’s “good morning,” the sound is completely muted. Here, again, we see the irony of communication as silence is what ultimately allows our characters to truly communicate with each other. 

Up on the hill overlooking Misaki’s abandoned house, the two characters embrace, and Yusuke transforms.

“I was so deeply hurt to the point of distraction but because of that, I pretended not to notice it. I didn’t listen to myself…Now I see. I want to see Oto…I want to talk to her just once more.” 

Yusuke, for the first time in years, looks at himself “squarely and clearly,” just as Takasugi has mentioned. He is not only telling Misaki this but, symbolically, himself and his past when he says: 

“Those who survive keep thinking about the dead in one way or another, that will continue. You and I must keep living like that. We must keep on living. We’ll be okay.”

A genuine conversation of the heart — perhaps what Oto has always wanted to hear from her husband amidst all the years of miscommunicated grief. 

What is so profound about the story of Drive My Car is that it is ultimately a story of being human. All humans are equipped with our own conscience and emotions. At the same time, we are all social animals that seek connection with other humans. How exactly you do that is not something we are taught at school. Society has long taught us it’s language — but is that actually true? Do verbal conversations or even physical conversations of love really allow us to connect with another human being on a genuine level? 

Drive My Car invites us to transform just as Yusuke has. Look into your heart. Accept the anger. Accept the love. Accept the grief. 

Once you do, you will be able to communicate — no, really communicate — with those you love.