Art and life collide in ‘Drive My Car,’ a peak 2021 achievement

In the largely Saab-bound short story “Drive My Car,” part of Haruki Murakami’s collection “Men Without Women,” an actor takes a job playing the title role in Anton Chekhov’s simple, profound comedy of thwarted passions, “Uncle Vanya.” (Few consider it funny, even in productions trying to be, but Chekhov classified it as a comedy.) The story largely unfolds as a series of conversations — officious at first, then gradually more unguarded — between the actor, whose wife has died, and his chauffeur, an isolated young woman most at home behind the wheel.

Those car-bound conversations remain central to co-writer and director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s exquisitely acted expansion of “Drive My Car.” But the film deepens Murakami’s scenario. It ventures into the minds and hearts of many other characters across…