Please welcome today’s guest writer, Kat Jonker. Kat was born and raised in West Michigan and will probably always call it “home.” She graduated from Calvin in 2018, and she currently teaches fourth grade in Hoboken, New Jersey. On weekdays she is joyfully consumed by her teaching, and she spends her weekends with her closest friends (including her violin).
This past January, I journeyed from my home in Jersey City to Lincoln Center in Manhattan to see the movie Drive My Car directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Due to inclement weather and my own weariness, my decision to do this was never “yes or no” but a hesitant commitment. Maybe you relate.
Arriving nearly late (that pesky 1 train), I had very little preview discussion with the friends I came with. I settled into my seat and wondered to myself whether this would be a long, cerebral movie that I would regret midway through.
In an early scene, main character Yusuke Kafuku performs in the play Waiting for Godot. His wife, Oto, forgoes other commitments to attend his performance. Afterwards, she seeks him out in his dressing room to congratulate him, one of many intentional acts of love. They have lost a child, and are clearly working hard to preserve their marriage. Later on, as Kafuku is leaving town for a work trip, he finds out that Oto is cheating on him. Frustratingly, he doesn’t confront her. Days later, Oto tells Kafuku that there’s something they must discuss, but she dies before they can, leaving him wanting clarity that he will never have. It’s at this point, forty-five minutes in, that the title sequence plays. At first I was relieved, thinking it was over already.
Can I sit through this movie? I thought as the friend sitting next to me left, whispering that she was getting a migraine. I was already emotionally exhausted, and also hungry. I decided that 5:30 p.m. was a suspiciously early start time for a Saturday night showing.
Two and a half hours later I stood up from the theater seat and raised my eyebrows at the friends still there with me. I was still tired and hungry, and a little tormented, but moved.
As I trained back under the Hudson toward home, I kept thinking about what I’d just witnessed. Maybe it’s because earlier that Saturday afternoon I had listened to Gary Schmidt’s January Series lecture and was eager to prove to myself that I also know things about the power of story. Maybe it was because I was trapped in my theater seat for three hours, which for me felt like a form of spiritual interrogation. Maybe it was because PMS ignited the brooding part of myself. Or maybe it was because I did the walk home from the train station that night without my headphones, forcing me to actually think a little more.
Seven years ago, I took an absurdist theater course. I remember thinking that I had managed to snag the least clichéd Developing a Christian Mind (DCM) course at Calvin College University. I felt proud to learn alongside theater majors and carry a book of Samuel Beckett’s plays with me each day.
I also felt, however, like it might be a waste of my time. Were these stories teaching me anything? As a college freshman looking forward to so many checkpoints and milestones ahead of me, watching Michael Gambon ramble nonsense from an armchair for an hour was more confusing than meaningful, and watching Waiting for Godot was intriguing, but I really didn’t want to stay for Act II. (Spoiler alert: Godot never comes.)
The years since that class have involved finishing undergrad and setting out into post-college life. (Spoiler alert: it’s tough.) Puzzling relationships, the paralysis of choice, and the repetitive daily grind progress in an absurd way. There are checkpoints you can chase after if you’re inclined—grad school, travels, marriage, a new hobby—but I now see that there truly is a place in the human soul for interminable stories, and I think adulthood did that to me.
In Drive My Car, I could relate to the endlessness in the dim silence between Kafuku and Oto, which starts with nonconfrontation and continues after her death. I think of the movie Once, which opens with one of the main characters angrily sing-shouting to his ex-girlfriend, “So much has gone misunderstood and this mystery only leads to doubt…if you have something to say, say it to me now.” I listen to that song regularly, and it evokes my own regrets every time.
In the movie, Kafuku always drives while listening to a recording of Oto reading lines from the play Uncle Vanya. He recites Uncle Vanya’s lines back to her recorded voice, over and over again, every single day. It’s like he thinks at some point that recording will instead say “I always loved you. I’m sorry.”
There was another play we watched in DCM, which was commissioned by and performed at Calvin many years ago. The play follows the story of the disciples after Jesus was taken to be crucified. They’re gathered in a room together, cowering in fear. They’ve lost everything. They regret running away from the soldiers who took Jesus. They don’t know what’s ahead of them. They argue. They’re confused.
I can’t remember how the play ends. Just that it was tiring to watch.
I will not, however, forget the end of Drive My Car. (I won’t spoil it.) The last few scenes helped me make more meaning out of my often absurd existence than those absurdist plays did seven years ago, but I don’t think that’s the fault of the plays. That might’ve had more to do with me at the time.
On the walk home from the train station that quiet January night, as I trudged through the snow in a bit of a mood, restless and eager to get home, I thought about those stories again, and I recognized myself.
Photo couresty Flickr user Mike Steele (CC BY 2.0)
