Monday, September 30, 2024

Drive My Car


September 11, 2024


B and I saw Drive My Car last night in an old theater on the corner of Clinton and 26th, where the screen is framed by an arch that rises to a rounded peak

The film takes its time, the opening titles shown forty minutes in

A whole world before then – a wife telling stories to her husband in bed – her infidelity, her death

Sometimes, we just hear the sound of the car’s engine

A long scene, driving north from Hiroshima to Hokkaido – according to Google maps, a twenty-seven-hour trip – two people, not speaking, the woman twenty-three – the same age as the man’s daughter would have been, had she lived  

Whipping rain and wind on a ferry

Silence of snow

When they do speak, their words are Japanese, a language I don’t know

Instead, I read the subtitles

A silent activity

A three-hour movie

B and I sitting side by side in the dark, the road ahead lit on the screen

It’s like we’re on a trip together, driving through the night

Passing factories and broad bodies of water, through a tunnel as long as our own city

The rubble of a house beneath a landslide

In the movie, the man is staging the Russian play Uncle Vanya, and the actor who portrays Yelena speaks Mandarin and English

The actor who plays Sonya speaks in Korean sign language – her hands like wings shaping words

I didn’t sleep the night before, my mind a tangle of live wires – now, in the theater, I drift off now and then – not really sleeping, but relaxing my grip, easing into the story of these characters, these people

How many times has B seen the film?

Watching a movie he loves is like stepping inside his heart – treading softly beneath leafy branches, my sleeve brushing a fragrance of his inner life

My son, who was once an infant to whom I used to sing in the night

With whom I used to walk around Mt. Tabor and smell the scent of fir needles and berries and damp earth

B talks about how the grieving father in the movie is now a father figure to other people’s children

When my father died, I knew him as I hadn’t known him before

I saw that every part of him was beautiful – I saw the tenderness that was there even when he was in a temper – the flames of which were sometimes hard to part when he was living

Sitting here today, on a chair in our damp yard, a wool blanket over my lap, I see our neighbor’s elm tree, untouched by chainsaws, left to tower and spread and break when the wind comes

The flower island in our grass looks so puny in comparison – feverfew, black-eyed susan, coneflower – but the blossoms add color – white and yellow, black and gold, pink and salmon

The distant traffic of Highway 26 is muted – we’ve lived here for almost 34 years – the sound so familiar – it could be the ocean

B was born just after we moved in, then I got my driver’s license so we could go places together without having to bump a stroller up the steps to the bus and hold him while I balanced on the moving vehicle and put my quarters in the fare box

Confession – I worried about him crying and disturbing the other passengers

A mistake? A character flaw? A mother who didn’t yet know herself?

We bought a big, beautiful boat of a car back then – no, it was ugly, faded to a silvery green, musty, cracked seats – if you rolled down the windows too far, you couldn’t roll them back up again – but the silent beast could move – gracefully – up hills, around green curves – and B and I would sing – Lena Horne: “It’s Love,” Frank Sinatra: “Let’s Take It Nice and Easy”

B knew every word

Eventually, he sang whole songs for our friends: “On the Street Where You Live,” “Witchcraft”

Oh

Nostalgia? Now?

Why polish the same misty mirror over and over again, flipping through the same faded pictures in the plastic sleeves?

The crows are calling this morning, and a yellow leaf from the Virginia creeper that grows on the warehouse behind me has landed in the fragrant arms of the rosemary bush – time to go inside to check on the dog, who is probably awake now

and wondering where everyone has gone.

 *

B (aka Bennett Campbell Ferguson) is a film critic. You can read his review of Drive My Car here.

 

 

 

 

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