Drive My Car

What an incredible, incredible movie.
I'll need some time to properly digest it and I think it deserves at least a 2nd vision to notice other details, words, glances and gestures because so much is said without using spoken words.

It is a stunning journey through grief and growth, with a very peculiar (for us Westerners at least, I feel) pace: slow, for sure, but also contemplative. It felt like being able to embark on the journey with the characters, thanks to their willingness to listen; I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, but in a U.S. movie I would have expected rage, emotions bursting, maybe crying - which for me if not done properly, disrupt the rhythm of the tale and sort of wake you up from your identifying with the people on screen. Here I felt characters internalized, reflected on the moments that shaked their core, allowing us to reflect with them.
Furthermore, the fact that little actually happens, allows to take the proper time to hear the characters, let them explain themselves slowly and not always with words - which I found a superb way to depict a human in a multifaceted way.

There are at least a couple of scenes I found remarkable: the dinner, the 3 people journey in the car and the (almost) final scene where sign language conveys emotion and the meaning of the moment in a better way than any speech.

I loved this movie on so many levels. One of the things that I really enjoy about watching movies made in other countries is that there is such a different approach when it comes to how a story is told. For example, in this movie you aren't even necessarily sure what the main conflict is. It isn't assumed that the male lead and the female lead are going to be romantically linked. There isn't a music bed to tell us when something dramatic is happening. With this movie I just fell into a nice groove with it and let it take me away for three hours. I swear that the movie felt shorter than many of the ninety minute movies that I've seen recently.

Of course, this means that the movie isn't for everyone. The acting is fantastic but the pacing is.... deliberate? I laughed out loud when the opening credits started rolling forty minutes into the movie. It's been twenty four hours since I watched it and I am still pondering the central themes of the movie. I've seen some people say that they didn't like the movie because they believed the central theme to be grief. It may have been for some of the movie but clearly not for all of it. Also, the movie is beautiful to look at and it provides an excellent backdrop to ponder what is happening in the film.

Anyway, I would easily put this up with Licorice Pizza and Coda as the best movies of 2021.

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A 3-hour long runtime is always intimidating, but every second of this felt necessary. It’s slow, but it doesn’t drag. Instead the tempo and stillness allow you to sit with these wonderfully complicated and wounded characters, both as a spectator to their stories and difficulties and as a part of the film yourself. Much like Takatsuki’s monologue about loving yourself before loving someone else, a good story is primarily about your subjective relationship with it, and only secondarily about its objective characters and plots. A good movie is introspective and connects to parts of your own soul and psyche by way of someone else’s (characters, director, writer). And Drive My Car is a really good movie.

I don't think there will ever be a better adaptation of the novel. simply amazing.

It's a pity that "Drive My Car" is not selling well in its home country, but it's also true that both the style and acting are the exact opposite of what Japanese audiences are used to. While the dialogues and situations tend to feel a little cold and artificial, I found the characters' reactions strangely realistic. Their lack of "action" is not what you would expect from a movie, but especially in Japan, that's what would most likely happen in real life.

Not much happens during the course of the film's three hours, but it felt like the director purposely gave us time to think, put the pieces together and relate to our own experiences in between each scene, just like the main character during his car rides back and forth the theater. I wouldn't date to call it slow cinema, but you get the idea. People who lived long enough to have regrets and skeletons in the closet will probably enjoy it.

My mum is a huge Murakami fan so rewatching this with her felt super special. I’ve only read one of his books (fastest read of my life, finished it in three days), but if this film is anything to go by I can’t wait to dive into Murakami’s world.

Drive My Car has everything I love in a story, it’s incredibly introspective, character-driven, layered and riddled with double meaning and metaphor. It’s slow paced and the action is minimal, so some could argue it works better as a book, but some of the visual motifs and signs throughout almost make it feel like it was always meant to be a film. Striking cinematography and subliminal acting and directing. The length is very demanding of the spectator but once you’ve finished, you understand that difficult emotions need time and care to be properly tackled. And, besides, rushing these actors would be an absolute crime - their growing performances with each minute are a treat to experience.

This movie awed me with its beautiful cinematography, which is used not only to show pretty imagery, but I feel it was used mostly to give us time to reflect on what was just said by the dialogue and internalize it, sometimes imagery was used to convey a specific feeling throughout the movie, for example through most of the runtime, during driving scenes, we see the street as if we were in the back seat looking through the back window of the car, contemplating the past, but at the end of the movie, for the first time, we see the street from the driver's point of view, as if looking to our future, and this is just something I found in my 1st watch through.


With almost 3 hours of run time, I found myself entranced in some parts and wondering when it was going to end in others, it is a slow burn, but I found it amazing how much it made me reflect not only on the characters but on myself as well, if I had to describe it in a phrase it would be: an autoscopic view of our past and our expectations for life

one hell of a long movie but honestly worth it,
the long scenes, with and without silence gave this movie something i can't describe, i can't put into words, but anyway, i loved the silent scenes so much

Trauma. Sadness. Driving. Multi-Lingual theater https://boxd.it/2FtYSl