In a three-hour film where arguably not much plot-driven activity occurs, Drive My Car entrances us through the spaces and locations its characters explore. Adapted from Murakami’s rather brisk short story of the same name, the setting of Hiroshima is a key addition to the film. The storyline follows actor/director Yusuke Kafuku’s move to Hiroshima where he is called to direct an avant-garde production of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya. Still reeling from the sudden death of his wife, he struggles to reconcile their intense love for each other - illustrated in a tender prelude - with his discovery of her affairs.

The story takes off when he is forced to acquiesce to the company’s request to be chauffeured by Misaki, an unsmiling young woman with remarkable driving skills. Though initially reluctant to give up his private time to rehearse while driving, her taciturn presence in his daily commute causes an unexpected connection to be formed.

“Drive My Car explores where we go after we have lost everything”

Nearly half an hour into the film, Hiroshima is introduced with a striking sense of vastness. Gone is the intimacy of a darkened room in the early morning - instead, wide shots frame the titular red car as it drives through the more natural parts of Hiroshima. As it crosses a bridge to traverse the coastline of the Setouchi sea, we see that the scenery is unmistakably beautiful: sunlight softened by the afternoon falls onto green hills and still waters, yet the tranquillity creeps towards loneliness. Other than in the rehearsal room for the play, there is a sense of emptiness wherever they go in the city, be it through nature or across the sprawling highways, and the city feels at most populated by cars. The scale of the characters against the expansiveness of the city imbues the film with a sense of isolation, and the perpetual travelling of the duo depicts the aftermath of grief. There is a sense of deeply felt restlessness as we traverse with them day by day through the melancholic stasis of the city.

Perhaps the most interesting location is where Misaki takes Yusuke when he asks her to drive him to wherever she likes. The film cuts to an amber-lit waste disposal facility, where we watch as a giant crane picks up a pile of rubbish and floats towards the two observers like a fiery wrecking ball. As the debris comes to rest in another pile, Misaki remarks ‘isn’t it like snow?’, adding to the almost absurdly yet poignantly drawn-out scene. Strolling through the facility that is unexpectedly constructed with floor to ceiling windows throughout, she explains that the open space of the atrium was specifically designed to allow for an unbroken axis between the sea and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The city’s history of insurmountable loss is acknowledged for the first time here, and its emphasis on the connectivity of space adds a tentative hope to the desolation that permeates the near-deserted streets.

“We wonder if a new home can be found in grief, or if there is only continued wandering”

It is this acknowledgement that spurs their conversation about why Misaki came to Hiroshima. She reveals that after a landslide had destroyed her house and killed her abusive mother, she was left only with a car, which she drove until it broke down in Hiroshima. There, she got a job driving garbage trucks and she has stayed here since. This sense of loss echoes through almost every character we meet: the loss of a wife, a lover, a mother, a child, and even a voice (with a breathtaking performance in Korean sign language by Yoorim Park) that has displaced each of them to Hiroshima. As the characters rehearse the play, performing in their different native languages in different places, the city unifies and resonates their losses, suggesting that perhaps grief is the one universal language.

At first, it’s unclear if Hiroshima represents a sanctuary for a fresh start or an escape from the past. The concurrent beauty and desolation in the way the city is portrayed reflects this tension, and we wonder if a new home can be found in grief, or if there is only continued wandering. To this end, Drive My Car takes an optimistic perspective by taking us out of Hiroshima to Misaki’s hometown. A day-long drive and a ferry later, we reach a town buried in snow, with the roof of Misaki’s collapsed house barely poking out. She recalls the times after her mother beat her, when she would revert to a vulnerable, childlike persona named Sachi, and despite everything, Sachi was her only friend.

Drawing a parallel to Yusuke’s late wife, Misaki muses if it would be hard to accept ‘that everything about her was genuine’ - perhaps the enigmatic nature of her choices do not affect her love for him nor the grief he feels, both of which are simple and straightforward. The heavy falling snow takes the vastness of the film to a new extreme for the emotional climax of the film. Still, there is a sense of quiet hopefulness in the complete immersion in the indistinguishable white backdrop, a rejuvenation in the search for new happiness as Yusuke concludes - ‘we must keep on living’.

Connecting a group of people who have suffered profound losses, Drive My Car explores where we go after we have lost everything. Grounding this in Hiroshima’s haunting beauty illustrates vividly the isolation and inner turmoil through the depiction of external places. It highlights the inherent complexity of the people we have lost: can we ever fully understand someone? Do we need to fully understand them to love them - and to feel the annihilation of losing them?