I finally saw Drive My Car
Great movie. I loved that it was about a guy who cannot stop analyzing all the texts in his life.
One of the big themes in the story is that the protagonist sees lessons in stories, but refuses to take them as inspiration to act on problems in his life. He's got some pretty huge problems, and the script of Uncle Vanya, the play he's directing, speaks to those problems pretty specifically. He rides around town listening to passages from the play that are just word for word about his life. (What's more, he only listens to the lessons that are negative, rather than life-affirming or inspirational.) He just marinates in that material - he never acts on the critique it applies to his life.
Eventually, the one thing that gets him fucked up enough to do anything actually turns out to be a story his wife tells him about a lamprey - and, subsequently, a YouTube video of a lamprey that he watches while, it's implied, considering who or what in himself or his life might be a lamprey (symbolically). There's the additional layer that this lamprey story is itself adapted from a completely different short story by Murakami than the rest of the movie is, which is fun. The sequence is extraordinarily uncomfortable, unpleasant, sad, and funny for some additional reasons I will not spoil, too.
You don't see a lot of movies about the experience of analyzing the themes of the various stories (and YouTube videos) that pass over you in your life... but it's something that a lot of people do. It feels to me like you are far more likely to see a movie about someone who believes that god is sending them a supernatural message than you are to see a movie about someone who makes a habit of detecting, analyzing, or using the messages they can find in the various creative works they encounter.
The reason for this is obvious - it is not always a good idea to put detailed recreations of other works inside your creative work. Even referencing other movies in a movie can be risky, because it can just remind the audience that they'd rather be watching that other movie. But it works here! I didn't realize until I was halfway through Drive My Car that I was enjoying that "watch a guy analyze texts" element of the film as much as I was.
When I watch movies, I find it hard to not think about them as deliberately-constructed bundles of themes and messages. English class fucked me up so bad that some portion of my mind is just doing that all the time. So it's always fun to see a well-told a story about someone so storybrained that they are doing this as well - not only with the surface level text of the stories in their life, but with the weirder deeper shit as well.
A play was the perfect choice here for a text for a guy to analyze. It remains dynamic on the screen when characters in a movie engage with it. But it's extremely funny and good that this character was so resilient to the messages in a Russian play... but cracked under the pressure of a particularly resonant YouTube video. Sometimes shit just lines up in your life. You're trying to make it through the day while making all the wrong choices and then someone mental booms you with some scary fish shit. We must continue to live! And suffer! Look carefully into this lamprey mouth and consider your life choices!! 😌