Drive My Car

Drive My Car, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature Film, and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 94th Academy Awards, is a critically acclaimed Japanese melodrama. The story revolves around four key characters. Protagonist Kafuku Yusuke is a renowned actor and theater director with a calm and quiet demeanor who is shocked to discover that his wife has a sexual relationship with a much younger man. His wife Oto is a creative and expressive mind who conceives ideas for her screenwriting while and after having sex. Young actor Takatsuki Koji seems to have a self-confident swagger but starts questioning his whole existence after a relationship with a minor destroys his career and leads to excessive media coverage. Watari Misaki is a young woman who suffered mental and physical abuse from her unstable mother in Hokkaido and started a new life as driver in Hiroshima. This movie explores the relationships between some of these characters and deals with overcoming challenges in general and processing loss in particular.

This movie convinces on several levels. First and foremost, the aforementioned characters are authentic, detailed and profound. Viewers will discover more about them with every single scene and care about their fates. Especially their flaws make it easy to empathize or even sympathize with them.

The acting performances are also very convincing. Especially the actresses truly deliver the goods. Kirishima Reika shines in the opening of the movie as free-spirited, imaginative and mysterious screenwriter. The very best performance might however come from Miura Toko as skilled driver in an identity crisis who doesn't speak much thoughout the film but transmits many emotions through precise body language in general and subtle facial expressions in particular.

Drive My Car is filled with many artistic, intellectual and philosophical references. This goes along with the artistic, creative and expressive characters. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is particularly referenced in the beginning while Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya receives much attention through the movie's middle section and ending. It also is no coincidence that the movie's setting shifts from downtown Tokyo to Hiroshima and its rural surroundings. Attentive viewers will also realize that the closing scene takes place in South Korea. These numerous subtle elements are complemented by an elegant soundtrack featuring classical music and the use of a red Sab 900 that represents individualism and nostalgia in a time of colletivism and change. This movie offers much to discover for an intellectual audience and is worth being viewed on several occasions to discover new facets.

The film is however not without its flaws. The running time of three hours includes a few minor lengths here and there. Especially the introduction that takes more than forty minutes before the opening credits appear could have been shortened a little bit. Some of the theater play practises and sequences also overstay their welcome and can at times be somewhat pretentious with passages featuring numerous foreign languages from Korean sign language to Taiwanese Mandarin.

At the end of the day, Drive My Car is a melodrama with emotional depth and intellectual details. This timeless film should please anyone looking for profound dramas built upon authentic characters. Patient viewers will be rewarded with a story that resonates long after the movie has ended.

Drive My Car is the sort of movie that, were I to describe it to myself, I'd be wary of it. It's leisurely paced - the first hour is essentially prologue - not a lot happens, and and takes time to get into its rhythm.

But ultimately it's kind of amazing. There's a remarkable subtlety to the characters, the focus on acting as a process is intriguing, and the movie doesn't offer answers but does offer ways to reconsider things you thought you know that are surprisingly compelling. It is also one of these movies you can't imagine being made in America; it just couldn't happen.

This is a movie that sticks with me in a way most movies don't. You should check it out.

A story about love, loss, grief, trauma, acceptance & healing that's rendered on screen with the care, attention & understanding it deserves, Drive My Car makes its 3-hour runtime feel insignificant by narrating a thoroughly engrossing drama that could only work if it is allowed to unravel at its own pace and makes for an emotionally crippling journey that benefits from sincere inputs from its cast.

Co-written & directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the opening credits surface around the 40th minute mark coz that's when the main story actually begins but what its extended prologue does in the meantime is it silently acquaints us with our protagonist's emotional state, inner turmoil & abounding emptiness within, which in effect allows us to sympathise with him & his actions on a much deeper & more intimate level.

What's impressive about Hamaguchi's storytelling is that he gives ample breathing room to his characters and allows them to express themselves at their own comfort. Also, he makes those moments earned through the quiet spaces in between. The story shifts gear once the stage director & the young chauffeur assigned to him start interacting about their past lives and the nuanced tone of their performances makes it even more immersive.

Overall, Drive My Car never hurries through any of its motions and requires patience on the viewers' part but it is worth the effort, for the end result is rewarding & stimulating on more levels than one. Anchored by Hamaguchi's steady direction and strengthened by authentic work from its cast, this Japanese road drama isn't for all but for those who can relate to its emotional journey, the film will prove to be a profoundly personal & therapeutic experience.

6/10 - if you are able to stick out the three hours, you might find some true wisdom, but I found myself more bored than anything else and felt like we could have cut out at least an hour of rehearsal scenes and not really have lost anything.

Things are left unsaid but it's too late, the time has passed but moving on stagnates, the engine sits and dwells, the seas disturbed with swells, as thoughts revolve, left unresolved, and memories rotate.

A reflective piece of filmmaking that idles along at a sedentary pace but never stalls as the lives of two severed souls journey through their pasts together and untwine the chords that shackle them to memories and moments of regret. Beautiful performances all round through a subtle and imaginative approach that will leave you contemplative and reflective, perhaps even more so if you have a similar scenario performing in your own background.