Drive My Car
a paean to wrong turns
Guilt is a dreadful affliction. It has no home. It is often a marauder, often bitter, always lonely. And in loneliness it becomes a beast - hurt, unreconciled, scarred. It haunts us in absentia when we are in love, and doesn't leave us when we think we are not. And it makes us inhabit the world with our unresolved inadequacies; and ourselves, with unresolved adequacies.
In a changeable world - where in a moment we move from feeling full to turn completely empty, as if a sea has found a water-grave - we struggle to understand our truths - what drives us, what angers us, what hurts us; and of people we thought we knew - of what they do, of why they do what they do.
And as we struggle, life passes us by, people die, lovers move on. Much before we even comprehend what the realities of our lives are trying to tell us, the earth itself moves, the universe leaves us deeper in our insufficiencies.
We are so busy finding fault with people, that we forget what they mean to us.
Our feeling starts from our conjecture of what they are feeling, and ends there. We do not stop to consider what people mean to us. We do not give ourselves a chance to understand more, hurt deeper, respond with questions of our misunderstandings and grief. As Yusuke tells Misaki -
"I should have been hurt properly. I let something genuine pass by. 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. So I lost. Forever."
And we learn the hard way - the hardest way possible - sometimes through irredeemable loss, often with bruises in our soul which continue to haunt us to the end of our lives - that life doesn't allow us to backtrack. Its cachet of regrets and beguilements are created instantaneously, and fill our souls such that we carry their ashes till we are ourselves reduced to ashes.
But is life so grim? Is there no redemption? Is living the ordinary life, with an ordinary amount of blunder, so terrifying?
The answer, possibly, lies in immersions and happenstances. When we embrace inevitabilities, and let them flow through us, till we are one with them, instead of avoiding them, we are ready to gift life, if not our best side, at least the most honest one. To square up and face up to consequences is the most frightening anticipation we can think of - like icy cold water on a one degree centigrade day - but it is also the one which cleanses the most.
As Yusuke tells Misaki with coruscating truth -
“But even if you think you know someone well, even if you love that person deeply, you can't completely look into that person's heart. You'll just feel hurt. But if you put in enough effort, you should be able to look into your own heart pretty well. So in the end, what we should be doing is to be true to our hearts and come to terms with it in a capable way. If you really want to look at someone, then your only option is to look at yourself squarely and deeply.”
Life can’t be lived in a mist. Its evolving clarities help us find ourselves, as well as craft our destinies, and critically, of those who we care the most about.
Reconciliations come in contrarian ways. Truth cleanses us: it also burns us. But in that bonfire of our past, our vanities, our fears, our misconceptions, our life burns softly like a flame. And, unbeknownst and unseen, the universe also glows, and gently lights unknown lives in mysterious ways.
As Lee Yoon-a, in her role as Sonya in the play "Uncle Vanya" says -
“We'll live through the long, long days, and through the long nights. We'll patiently endure the trials that fate sends our way. Even if we can't rest, we'll continue to work for others both now and when we have grown old. And when our last hour comes we'll go quietly. And in the great beyond, we'll say to Him that we suffered, that we cried, that life was hard. And God will have pity on us. Then you and I we'll see that bright, wonderful, dreamlike life before our eyes. We shall rejoice, and with tender smiles on our faces, we'll look back on our current sorrow. And then at last, we shall rest. I believe it. I strongly believe it from the bottom of my heart. When that time comes, we shall rest.”
The film is -
Drive my car is a gorgeous paean to the consequences of taking wrong turns in our life, when our choices are born out of fear of loss or import of truths. It’s a heartbreaking film of lost opportunities and second chances. With a car acting as a symbol of a safe haven, a confession box, and a home of difficult conversations, the story assimilates the guilt of its characters with the redemptions inherent in Chekhov’s ‘Uncle Vanya’, a play which runs like blood through the veins of the film.
I have not stopped feeling about this film since I saw it.
The music is -
This gorgeous piece is a celebration of the senses. It starts slowly with a soft percussion beat, moves into its guitar riffs, and then slowly starts its seduction, surrounding you, taking you by the hand, and then leading you astray. It starts asking you to explore, like all good jazz does, showing you options, an array of aural arrangements, confusing you, taking you up, taking you down, but with an underlying stream of strength, to tell you that it’s holding your hand, not letting it go, in spite of the upheavals. And then the gorgeous return to the roots, the beginnings. But you’re a changed person now, a person buffeted, experienced, new inside your old self. But all the goodness is capricious in its gorgeousness. You have both expanded and remained the same. The best is floating. So are you.
The trailer -
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