Guest reviewer Chad Clark has a review of Drive My Car, nominated for four Oscars!
If a foreign film with a three-hour runtime sounds like a chore, you may stop reading.
Still here? Good.
Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, Drive My Car centers on a widowed thespian (Hidetoshi Nishijima) who takes a theater residency in Hiroshima to cast and direct a play of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.
Are you still reading 😅?
You know you are in for a long movie when the opening credits don’t start until 35 minutes in.
I’ll be honest, I expected to dislike this one.
On the surface, it is a hard sell.
As a former actor who used his driving time to rehearse lines and prepare, the director is disappointed to learn that the theater company requires him to be driven around due to a previous director dying in a car crash.
His driver is a quiet, but professional 23-year-old (Tôko Miura).
The two — of course — bond during their hour-long commute. They unravel their respective emotional traumas through road-trip therapy.
But there is so much more to this movie than just this friendship featured prominently in the title and poster.
There is an entire cast of a theater production, and writer/director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi peels off the layers slowly and methodically for each member.
The film is very sonically soothing — quiet drives, soft voices, jazz music.
I was absolutely floored by the dialogue. It cuts right to the heart with long, powerful passages of storytelling.
Performances and direction are all on point.
Just an all-around exquisite production.
Drive My Car is every bit as good or better than recent Best Picture nominees Parasite, Roma, and Minari. It deserves a handful of Oscar nominations, but has been largely ignored in the early awards circuit.
Playing in select theaters.
Chad Clark is a self-proclaimed pop-culture expert living in Athens, GA. Find more of his reviews on instagram at likelovehatereviews!