EPTKenyon Pearce Lewis died by suicide on April 2nd, 2015, aged 20. Those of us that had the great fortune of knowing him regarded him highly as someone that had an impeccable sense of humor and was a great person to be friends with. He was also the most brilliant and most beautiful man I have ever known in my almost 26 years on this planet. He wasn't always this wonderful person to me. During elementary school, he bullied me so frequently that I ended up isolating from my peers for three years. His monumental change into a far better person caused him to apologize to me our freshman year of high school in 2009, marking the rapid destruction of my misanthropic beliefs.
When losing someone that means a great deal to you, all their supposed sins and transgressions fall by the wayside. It doesn't matter if they cheated, or if they made years of your life hell. Yusuke catching Oto cheating on him and not saying anything to her or Koji is very representative of the idealization people give to their loved ones. The love is so deep that a betrayal like cheating gets suppressed by Yusuke and not brought up with Oto. And in a way, why would he bring it up? Oto uses sex to get her ideas out and when you're driven to create art and share it, you do whatever it takes to form those ideas, the dialogue, the scenes, and the characters as people, something that Yusuke has a very deep understanding and respect for as an actor. It fundamentally changed their relationship when he found out, but the change was a much more subtle shift to unresolved tension, not blowing up and causing a rift like is common in Western film, the subtlety being what Ryusuke Hamaguchi not only excelled at but made perfect throughout the three-hour runtime of Drive My Car.
The death of Oto was sudden. The death of Kenyon was sudden. Yusuke and I both ended up losing a person that had changed our lives in immeasurable ways. We ignored how they hurt is and instead shifted the blame to ourselves. Yusuke kept saying that he should've gotten home sooner to see Oto and could have saved her. I knew that Kenyon was in severe depression after dropping out of college because we were both in the same boat. We could've made differences. Yusuke could've made one decision different and gotten home earlier, potentially saving Oto by taking her to the hospital. I could've reached out to Kenyon despite also being suicidal and in despair at my life. We both forgave those we lost and directed our grief onto ourselves.
A lot of media deals with grief in some way. How it makes you borderline depressed for a while and how it's overcame with inspirational words during a couple of scenes. Nice and simple. Someone dies in a film, they stop taking care of themselves, and they're back to normal but with extra resolve a few minutes later. What I don't often see represented is the specific type of grief that comes from blaming yourself for someone's death. This grief doesn't cause you to be sometimes angry. It doesn't cause you to just be mopey for a little while. It consumes you. It takes over and devours every facet of your personality until you're left hollow, a husk of a human, no longer feeling emotion. When Yusuke started the table reads of the Uncle Vanya script, it's a beyond accurate representation of his sorrow. No emotion. No progression. Just repeating the same actions indefinitely. Monotonous. Sisyphean. Flat. There's no color to your world anymore.
Yusuke trying in some way to get back at Koji by giving him a lead role he's most likely not qualified for isn't some calculated, cunning plot to ruin his reputation as an actor. It just is. Yusuke wants so desperately to shift the crushing burden onto someone or something because he can't handle it alone. Koji doesn't deserve it for having sex with Oto, but thinking rationally with that level of numbness, especially after two years of it, is nigh impossible. This is best shown by Ryusuke Hamaguchi when Koji gets suddenly arrested and taken away from the rehearsals for Uncle Vanya. Yusuke doesn't celebrate. Yusuke doesn't sigh in relief. He just regards it as an event that happened, albeit one that paradoxically makes him feel worse as he now has nobody to blame Oto's death on.
From the night I found out that Kenyon died until the time I watched Drive My Car, I thought about him multiple times a day. I emotionally self-harmed by purposely making myself have my thoughts consumed by nothing but him and how I'm the one that killed him. It was the only times I felt anything. 2,461 days of self-inflicted suffering. I knowingly did actions and inactions that caused me to suffer. I stayed in abusive relationships because I wanted to inflict pain on myself. I isolated myself from all of my friends because I didn't want to have any positive interactions in my life. It never made me feel any better. The most severe incident happened December 24, 2021, two days before I saw Drive My Car. I had some sort of dream that I managed to make lucid, something that has only occurred once before. I had the power to do anything I could imagine, so I decided to imagine Kenyon at 26, succeeding in his dreams of being a revolutionary engineer. It broke me as a person.
Watari is the perfect companion for Yusuke. The friendship and understanding they form is something that is extremely accurate to grief. When you have someone that knows exactly what you're going through, you develop a very special bond of understanding, even if the both of you are numb to life's events. Watari opening herself up to Yusuke and having it reciprocated is the perfect human condition. The musician Daniel Johnston has a lyric that goes "To understand and be understood is to be free", and it's perfect for them. You can have all the therapy in the world, all the supportive friends, family, and partners, all the attempts at positive self-talk that money can buy, but it's meaningless because none of them understand your pain. I'm sure it's represented by alcoholics anonymous and narcotics anonymous groups and similar that exist. And this isn't some stereotypical moody teenage "no one understands me" feeling. You can't truly open up to someone that doesn't get it.
The scene with Watari and Yusuke standing in the snow at the rubble of her mom's house devastated me. Knowing that you had the ability to stop a death but didn't, even if they were awful, will make you regret things the rest of your life. Watari's learned to live with her pain, but despite that, she helps Yusuke finally have the emotional release that no one has ever given him. I started to tear up at how moving of a scene it was.
I will not ever forget watching Yoon-a and Yusuke performing Uncle Vanya. The intimacy of Yoon-a signing to Yusuke that he doesn't have to suffer anymore destroyed my mental state and caused me to break down crying at the packed Museum of Fine Arts, Houston theater. It doesn't matter that it was just the dialogue of Uncle Vanya. It was something that no one had ever told me. People told me phrases like "you can't blame yourself" or "Kenyon wouldn't want you to keep beating yourself up", but none of them stuck with me. When the signing stopped, I felt the worst I had ever felt in my life. I didn't know why I made myself suffer so much. I didn't know why I couldn't move on. I spent the next six hours thinking about Drive My Car and my own journey with grief, and then I finally found my answer. Yusuke had suffered enough. Even if I had killed Kenyon, I had suffered enough. I could move on. I didn't have to torment myself anymore. It was okay to forgive myself.
2,461 days after Kenyon's suicide, Ryusuke Hamaguchi managed to do what no one else had even come close to achieving. He made me finally feel peace for the first time in my life. I will always remember that.
Thank you, Ryusuke Hamaguchi. You have changed my life for the better. I hope I get to thank you in person one day.
And to Kenyon, my dear friend, I will always love you. I know you were an atheist, but I hope to see you after this life, if HaShem allows it.
May the memories of all those we've lost be a blessing.
