Drive My Car

The first act in Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car is forty-one minutes long.  I know this because I checked the time when the opening titles started, which was forty-one minutes into the film.  I had to check, because obviously this must be the furthest into a film that I've ever seen the opening titles, and I also realized that it represented a milestone in the film.  Everything that came before was of importance, but everything that happened after would be was somehow independent; the opening titles marked a new beginning.  The film was punctuated with similar cinematic cues; moments of deep connections between two characters, and silent scenes where body language said everything that needed to be said, yet overall the film has a very minimalist sensibility, which subtly draws the audience in.  The central character of the film is a stage director, and much of the film takes place as he is adapting one of Chekhov's plays, Uncle Vanya.  It turns out that the process of directing, rehearsing, and performing is cathartic for the main character, and as such it opens him up to some profound introspection.  The characters that he interacts with along the way are pull him in surprising directions; most notably his relationship with a young actor provides a revelation in an unexpected way.  While the film is definitely compelling from time to time, it fails to recognize the principle of efficiency.  To paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, editing a film is the process of removing all the extraneous pieces, until all that remains is a great film.  There may be a great film encapsulated in Hamaguchi's Drive My Car, but certain scenes run long, points that have already been made are unnecessarily repeated, and the ending felt out of place.  Actually, the ending had all the earmarks suggesting that the filmmakers didn't have confidence in the audience; a better film would have ended with the second-to-last scene, but then again, isn't that usually the case?