Much like Waiting for Godot protagonists Vladimir and Estragon, their lives are trapped in a state of stasis. The people who shape their lives are no longer on this Earth, yet their individual presences are profoundly felt. Similarly, Kafuku and Watari are both individuals who’ve become trapped by the horrors of the past and especially the complex emotions they feel towards those they’ve lost. Their lives have been put on pause for a figure named Godot, a reflection of how much our existences are molded by others even when they’re not physically present. Godot is all about two men waiting for something that’ll never come. Beyond establishing the job Kafuku is immersed in, this play’s central themes make for a great parallel to the plot of Drive My Car. RELATED: ‘Drive My Car’ Named Best Film by the New York Film Critics CircleĮven before Kafuku and Watari cross paths, Drive My Car establishes its ingenious use of previously existing material in an early scene depicting the concluding moments of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. This task comes with a required chauffeur, Misaki Watari ( Tōko Miura), another quiet soul who’s also got trauma of the past molding her present. Flash-forward two years later and Kafuku, who now wanders the Earth with a stifled disposition, has been hired to direct a production of the Anton Chekhov play Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. The story Hamaguchi is telling here concerns theater director Yūsuke Kafuku ( Hidetoshi Nishijima), whose life is thrown into disarray when he comes home one day to discover that his wife has suddenly passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage. The new Ryusuke Hamaguchi movie Drive My Car, though, is the perfect example of how to interweave classic works of art into your film (in this case, vintage plays) and not only not distract from your story but enhance it. A tedious film flashing a vivid painting on-screen, for example, could inspire one to vacate the auditorium and check out a museum instead.

The same can be said for tremendous works from other mediums of artistic expression. Film critic Roger Ebert once remarked that it's a bad idea to reference a beloved movie in your film since it can only serve to remind people of superior features they could be watching instead.

Chekhov vanya