for the love of cinema
art imitates life... so what?
My consumption of films suddenly boomed in February of 2022, prompted by a slow and steady introduction to great films like The Worst Person in the World and The Lost Daughter. Recommended to me by a dear friend, I completed Drive My Car on February 10th after 4 dilatory attempts. Despite cutting it into 4 sessions, the film had a great effect on me, and I consider it to be one of my favorite films for more reasons than one. Ever since then, my consumption of films has spiked remarkably, and before I realized what I was doing, sitting numbly in front of my screen and consuming any movie of any length became a consistent routine of my week.
In retrospect, I realize that I was undergoing a turbulent time in my life, which I can remember only in titles; My Dissociation Worsened. Grandmother’s Coma. Writing My Senior Project. A Much Worse Dissociation. Summer. Grandmother’s Passing. College Graduation. The only distinct memories I have of that year are reflected on the pages of my Letterboxd diary. Fitly, these film logs were the bandwidth that stalled my self-flagellation, as film-watching became the only constant in these months of unrest. I considered it a productive activity, in which I was able to sit down and live long enough to complete a new movie in my lifetime. On arid days, “at least I watched a movie today” was the sole comforting thought that softened my pillow.
A month after I graduated, I went back to school and signed up for two courses in a Cultural Studies Master’s program. One class was titled Emotions, Affections, and Ethics, which investigated the spectrum between emotions and affections in the stoic bubble of philosophy. For the midterm, I had the opportunity to write about any piece of media or literature and discuss the relativity of emotions to the philosophies we mentioned in class. And so I decided to sit down 3 more times to complete my second and more meticulous rewatch of Drive My Car. My professor was intrigued enough by my paper that she allowed me to expand it for the final.
Regularly perusing the film and sitting on the same couch for weeks on end, I gambled with my sanity and mental health for the sake of doing this paper justice. My Eureka moment came to me under a lamplight and with the coaxing of Sade’s King of Sorrow. As I rewatched Uncle Vanya’s concluding scene, I discovered that not only did Drive My Car rekindle my love for cinema, but it also embodied the relationship I have with films during its impassioned falling action.
Drive My Car (2021) final Theater Scene
I keep going back to that scene and examining the way Sonia signs her lines. She gets behind Vanya and signs these words of hope in front of his eyes, as though he is the one uttering them. As a way to prevent Vanya from killing himself, she tells him to look forward to his natural death, that his relief lies ahead at the hands of God when they eventually meet. Vanya, hopeless and pessimistic, sobs like a scared child in her arms as she hugs him from behind. It knocked the wind out of me.
Anton Chekhov’s concluding lines in Uncle Vanya, accompanied by the silence of the stage, and the shots between the audience and the actors perfectly enunciate the depth of the play and its effect on both audience and actor. The final lines of Sonia’s monologue transcend the curtains of theater, speaking not only to Vanya/Yusuke but also to Misaki, his chauffeur, and me.
Yusuke’s tears are a testimony to his catharsis, which is constructed around a remarkably painful build-up. The term comes from the Greek medical word katharsis, meaning purification. Aristotle was the first to reference this term, attributing it as a result of good acting. Catharsis is a process, in which the actor and audience become connected. It can be a complicated relationship, especially in this film, because Yusuke is both the actor of this role and the audience of its effect. Misaki, for example, is twice distanced, and her presence in the audience becomes an extension of us, the viewers of Drive My Car.
Chekhov’s Vanya is a character that wallows in his misery. His impulsiveness and self-destructive habits bring out the worst in the rest of the play’s cast, along with the actors that play him. “Chekhov is terrifying,” said Yusuke when Koji asked him why he wasn’t playing the role of Vanya himself, “When you say his lines, it drags out the real you”. Certainly, the fictitious Vanya is not a direct representation of Yusuke, yet, his dialogue leaves an aftertaste of truth on his tongue. When he shares the same thoughts as such a destructive character, Yusuke fears the toll it might inflict on the fragile membrane around his life, especially after years of repairing the damage inflicted by his role in Waiting for Godot.
At the beginning of the film, the first play we see Yusuke in is Samuel Beckett’s absurdist tragicomedy Waiting for Godot. The play’s annular plot revolves around two characters that seem to wait forever for this mysterious Godot who never shows up. Yusuke’s long history in dramaturgy proves how the characters he plays simply bleed into his real life. His lead role in Beckett’s play introduces him as someone who was perpetually delaying confrontation, forever waiting for Oto, his wife.
Following the film’s climax, Yusuke’s demurral to go back to the stage as Vanya is justified. Yet, when he realizes that he and Misaki share the same guilt, he decides to return. This decision is a gift, in which he allows Misaki the chance of encountering the same terrifying lines of Chekhov. The theatre becomes a safe space for her to identify with Vanya’s inexorable guilt. In the interim of that last scene, Vanya is granted a chance at absolution through Sonia, consequently granting Yusuke and Misaki the same chance. Vanya’s catharsis is transmitted from Yusuke, the actor, to his audience, Misaki. And what makes it extra bittersweet is the fact that, since Yusuke was so tortured by his guilt, he felt like he wasn’t deserving of this relief, which is perhaps why he put off his return to the stage for so long.
And so, my Eureka moment was ultimately this: I was not hungry for films, I was hungry for my next catharsis. Letterboxd became my own Library of Babel, and I would search and search for the next movie that would heal me and wash over me with absolution. I overdosed on its therapeutic effect for as long as I could to relieve my own perpetual grief. It is not easy for me to cry watching films, but it became a gamble I am willing to take, as it was easier for me to cry over a film than it was to cry over my own short life.
Getting into movies last year was perhaps the best thing that ever happened to me, as I can confidently say that they have changed me as a person. They were my source of escapism and a glaring coping mechanism. I owe it all to the minute I fell back in love with cinema, impelled by the time I hit play on the three-hour mammoth that is Drive My Car. The film is a sophisticated yet artless love letter to acting and cinema, reminding me of the reason why we watch movies in the first place. It is an ode to storytelling, the art that I realized binds all of humanity, past and present.
i am so glad i waited a little to read this, i needed ur eye and words for beauty right now. electrifying read. i am ensnared by the emotional depth of ur writing and the way in which u walk the line between devastation and buoyancy. ❣️
i feel similarly in the way that i’m waiting for something to take hold of me whenever i watch a film, sometimes im waiting to feel something, for it to change me, aka the catharsis you speak of. gonna watch the movie again now