&lt;Drive My Car &#8220;is nominated for four Academy Awards. Expectations are high ahead of the awards ceremony at the film is highly acclaimed both at home and abroad &#8230;&#8221; Was it interesting? &#8220;&#8230; Sanae Kameyama, a nonfiction writer who is not a film critic but a &#8220;theater lover,&#8221; saw Drive My Car.
<figure id="attachment_236157" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 926px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-236157"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="f16de066"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/03/a741ba1e5ae0e3e5510541d7301a6142.png" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-236157" class="wp-caption-text">Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi is highly acclaimed both in Japan and abroad. At the New York Film Critics Circle Awards ceremony, he was seen with Lady Gaga. Photo: REX / Afro</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Packed with &#8220;now&#8221; and &#8220;individuality&#8221; as much as possible.</h2>
The film &#8220;Drive My Car&#8221; (original story by Haruki Murakami, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi) has been nominated for four Academy Awards. In this drama, Iefuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a director and actor, meets Misaki (Toruko Miura), a mute female driver, and finds a kind of healing and hope when they feel each other&#8217;s emotional wounds, which seem almost involuntary, pass through each other.
The three-hour length of the film, the multilingual drama that unfolds throughout the play, the homage to Chekhov, who is considered a revolutionary in the world of theater, the respect for the acting methods of French film director Jean Renoir, and the diversity It is a film that is surely going to win an Oscar. Of the &#8230;&#8230;. The film is packed with a variety of &#8220;now as an era&#8221; and &#8220;director&#8217;s tastes and individuality&#8221;.
It is a critically acclaimed film, and I am neither a film critic nor a film connoisseur, so I will not criticize it. However, I am left with a simple question from an amateur, and a &#8220;blurred vision&#8221; as a &#8220;theater lover&#8221; ..
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<h2>What Director Hamaguchi&#8217;s &#8220;stick reading&#8221; method eliminates</h2>
The process from the actors&#8217; audition to the reading of the film progresses along with Iefuku&#8217;s past and consciousness and his 20-year relationship with his wife, a method that Hamaguchi actually uses when shooting his films. He eliminates emotion and simply reads the dialogue. It does not matter if it is a bar reading with no emotion attached. In fact, there are a few actors in the film who read their lines in a barbed voice. The question is, how is that &#8220;theatrical&#8221;? if the amount of dialogue in the film does not also exclude the privilege of &#8220;visual images.
I personally believe that actors put their souls on the line through their bodies. If the actor continues to read the lines without emotion, the lines may enter the body, but the actor&#8217;s trial-and-error process will be lost. The audience will not be able to see it. So even if the dialogue is coming from the body, it does not sound as if it is coming from the soul.
Therefore, even when Iefuku and Misaki disclose their deep-seated &#8220;wounds&#8221; at the end of the play, they are not heard as if they are coming from their souls. This is just my personal impression.
<h2>Is it necessary to &#8220;face one&#8217;s self&#8221;?</h2>
In the first place, I wonder if a person who has been carrying so much pain for so many years can communicate so easily to a &#8220;stranger&#8221; who has only spent a few months with him. Of course, it is possible that a stranger could be triggered by something to show the &#8220;black mass deep inside of himself&#8221; all at once. However, I don&#8217;t think the circumstances that led to that point are convincing.
This is a generalization, but do people really need to &#8220;face themselves&#8221; that much? It is a fair argument that &#8220;if it is hard, just say it is hard, and if you want help, ask for it. However, because we It is not because they are concerned about how others feel, but because they are aware that pulling that fact out of the back of their mind will destroy them. I personally wonder if we should &#8220;face&#8221; such wounds head on. If I can live with a lid on it, if I can find a place to drop it while remaining ambiguous, then why not?
<h2>Masaki Okada alone unleashed &#8220;sexiness and madness.</h2>
It may be essential for an actor to similarly either sexiness or madness, or both. One actor who stood out in this film was Masaki Okada as Takatsuki. impulse. He apparently went after some guy and hit him, but when he came back, Masaki Okada&#8217;s body movements were amazing. When he came back, Okada Masaki&#8217;s body movement was amazing.
He came back from punching a man with a warrior&#8217;s tremor, and his hips floated even though he was standing there pretending to be calm. Wasn&#8217;t this an act of his soul? No matter how restrained he was, his body oozed sex appeal and madness.
I also watched &#8220;Coincidence and Imagination,&#8221; another film by the same director, Hamaguchi, consisting of three omnibus episodes. Here, too, the actors&#8217; emotional inflections did not carry over to the dialogue. This may have been an aspect of the film It is not possible to immerse oneself in the story. It is almost impossible for the actors to have excellent facial expressions. That evoked imagination in the audience, but it did not allow us to enjoy the &#8220;play&#8221; as much as we would have liked. and body language, even though the dialogue is read in a barbed tone.
As an audience member, I am somewhat puzzled by the excessive use of bar reading, as I want at least to be moved by the &#8220;actors&#8217; performances&#8221; and to be intoxicated by the world of the drama.
<h2>Kabuki acting, betting one&#8217;s soul</h2>
The day after seeing &#8220;Drive My Car,&#8221; I saw Kataoka Nizaemon&#8217;s &#8220;Yoshitsune Senbonzakura: Watakaiya, Omonoura&#8221; at the Kabuki-za Theater. Kabuki has a pattern. But the actors of today breathe their own souls into the kata that have been handed down from generation to generation. No matter how many times they play the same role, they are always conscious of the present, and they never fail to devise ways to make it more realistic. This is why kabuki has continued to be performed for more than 400 years, in step with the times. In Nizaemon&#8217;s performance of Taira no Tomomori, the audience is moved to tears by a tranquility that transcends resentment.
The wonder of the dialogue, the deep and rich expression of emotion in even the slightest glance, and the flavor of the character that can be created by a single actor. I believe that is what acting is all about. The audience felt that &#8220;Chisamori &#8220;was indeed on stage at that moment. The audience was absorbed by the actors&#8217; spirit and skill.
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What is the meaning of reality in a play, what is dialogue for an actor, and what does it mean for an actor to put his soul on the line? Personally, I always seek the pleasure of being able to enter into the actors and the story, but I wonder if there is also the pleasure of having a bird&#8217;s eye view.
I have been thinking about this ever since I saw &#8220;Drive My Car.

 Sanae Kameyama

 REX/Afro

 ＜Drive My Car" has been nominated for four Academy Awards in the U.S. Anticipation is high ahead of the awards ceremony to be held on August 28 (Japan time). The film is highly acclaimed both at home and abroad... "Was it interesting? ...not a film critic, but a "

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