Directed By Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Starring – Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Reika Kirishima

The Plot – Adapted from a short story in Murakami Haruki’s “Men Without Women”. A director’s wife (Kirishima) was a playwright, but she died two years ago. When he’s invited to direct a play at a festival in Hiroshima, the director (Nishijima) finds his chauffeur (Miura) to be a stoic woman. The two share many rides, and as communication is initiated secrets and confessions are gradually exchanged.

This film is currently not rated

DRIVE MY CAR – Trailer – YouTube

POSITIVES

“Drive My Car” is a film that requires your unabridged attention, and how it attains such a demand is in the authenticity and vulnerability of its various interactions, which highlight the signature Hamaguchi style of drawn-out emphasis. That description may hinder the accessibility and interests of certain audiences, but the way Ryusuke crafts the structure of his dialogue, complete with slow-building emotions and ever-increasing stakes is a thing of intricate beauty, especially in the shifting dynamic of his two leads conjuring something therapeutically profound between them. It is in this aspect of the film where I found myself most indulged in the unraveling of the storytelling, in turn supplanting more than a few endearing twists reveals that not only prescribed empathetic value towards the integrity of the duo, but also articulated the star-crossed symmetry between two people thrown together at random that doesn’t require tenderness or love between them to elicit something that can certainly be defined as poetically romantic. This is realized exceptionally in the depth of the performances from Nishijima and Miura, who both stir something scintillatingly complex in the outline of their characters, while embodying the same stoic resonance for entirely different reasons. For two portrayals that are emotionally reserved, and instead allow their bodily movements to convey a deeper message, it is surprisingly connective in its transferring sentimentality, especially with a scene late in the third act where the two crumble to pieces while finally being forced to confront the pain that they’ve both continuously run from. Beyond this, the technical merits of the film are equally stimulating, with Hidetoshi Shinomiya’s copacetic cinematography painting a beautifully scenic and colorfully moody canvas to the texture of the movie’s various themes and underlining impulses. The sound design also takes advantage of beneficial opportunities within the designs of the characters to absorb and relish in the overwhelming silence that swallows these situations whole. One such example pertains to the scenes inside of the car, with various influences in weather or geometric placements outside being audibly obscured by the same windows that our protagonists stare out of. It gives the viewer that immersive feeling in audibility that helps to transcend the limitations and barrier of the screen, and provides proof in the proverbial pudding for Hamaguchi, who stitches together technical ambition to an intimately revealing narrative that isn’t compromised by the chances it takes in its technical aspects.

NEGATIVES

If you’re going to establish any film with a three-hour run time, you better have such a compelling brand of storytelling that hooks audiences from the get-go, and therein lies the problem with “Drive My Car”. Not only does this film get off to a plodding, arduous start with its opening forty-five minutes, which eventually gets revealed to be a prologue to a bigger picture following it, but its ambiguous job of opening us up to the ensuing characterization makes them a chore to invest in, taking ample time before I was even interested in what was taking shape. From there, the film does get better, but never with pacing that allowed these scenes to flow with the kind of consistency that makes the wear of its minutes feel like half of the reality. Part of the problem is certainly in the material this cut leaves in, with certain throwaway scenes adding little to nothing of the necessity of the storytelling, but the prolonged nature of certain scenes overstaying their welcome certainly can’t be overlooked and proves how uninterested I was in anything that wasn’t Nishijima and Miura interacting in their two-door world that felt planets from the ensuing world surrounding them. Beyond this, I took great problem with the consistency of the tone, which forcefully feels smothered in a glaze of Oscar-bait claustrophobia, instead of the necessary moments of humility in humor that help us grow and endear to the world and characters we’re asked to grow with. To be fair, there are brief attempts at attaining some semblance of intentioned laughs for us the audience, but because so much of this film prides itself as a smothering drama, these moments overwhelmingly come across as goofy, instead of the authentically rendered, which so much of the film prides its interactions on. Finally, while the film is marketed mostly between these two characters and a windshield, I found that aspect of the film to be disappointingly brief, especially in the air of a three-hour run time that should’ve provided endless opportunities with such. This aspect of the film happens briefly during the first two hours, but we really don’t experience what is advertised until the final forty minutes of the movie, and for my money that is when the film not only thrives with its most consistency, but also knocked my grade up a whole point because I finally felt that I was watching the movie that I was sold.

OVERALL

An inevitable Oscar darling to many, “Drive My Car” is a good film that wants to be great, weighed down by the overindulgence of a plodding narrative that could’ve used a secondary cut to craft a two-hour candidate for the best film of the year. As it stands, the remarkable performances, impressive technical feats, and thematic impulses provide just enough gas to steer this one to its destination, even if three hours in this car have you checking your watch on more than one occasion.

My Grade: 7/10 or C+