DRIVE MY CAR
Added 2022-03-17 21:29:18 +0000 UTCLet's discuss. Saw it recently, and cannot stop thinking about it. What were your thoughts? Very much one of those experiences that meanders, shifts, winds around, and then settles into something powerful. I'd love to know how it was for you, if you've seen it.
Comments
Without a doubt, the best film in the Best Picture category. Truly moving.
Atticus Xey
2022-03-24 18:30:54 +0000 UTCJust saw it. I felt that the third act really brought it home. I was just transfixed by those later monologues. Takatsuki’s long story about Oto and the visit to Misaki’s destroyed home were just emotional knockouts for me. I appreciated the pacing for the most part, but I think it was just a tad too slow in the second act. As you say, it meanders but it transforms into something powerful. There’s a lot to dissect about this one and I’m hoping it comes through a little better on a rewatch. But overall I really enjoyed it.
Jackson Littlewood
2022-03-20 14:47:34 +0000 UTCI thought it was great. It was beautifully, carefully presented and felt as if a seasoned auteur was behind it. I thought the pacing, for the most part, was very good. It felt consistently slow but almost never boring. Amazing performances, beautiful cinematography, and subtle sound design all added to the experience for me. I feel like if the same screenplay was given to someone different to direct, I would like it significantly less. Overall, I loved it.
Asher
2022-03-19 20:08:33 +0000 UTCI say it’s well worth finding out. Ideally, I wouldn’t mind any film that aims to be a 3-hour odyssey of a man whose spirit has fallen and rises again as he comes to understand the pain and hardship of those around him, but I’m just not sure about the execution of this one. Like I said, the wife’s prologue is the segment I feel is most mired in being a writer’s concoction than a slice of real life, and is probably better off being referred to than actually shown. Doing so might make the wife’s story more effective, as well as help smooth out a lot of flaws I feel surround the actor’s plot line (though nothing will prevent him from coming off as threatening as a Backstreet Boy). It might also help me be more receptive to the film’s proliferation of mirroring devices. The entire prologue might ultimately be, as you said, a redundancy. Plus, that glaucoma plot point you mention as being too on the nose goes absolutely nowhere. I’ve never taken issue with the slow, deliberate pace which director Ryusuke Hamaguchi tells the story. In fact, I, like many other on this thread, found it to be one of the best aspects of the film. His patience with letting things unfold as they do casted a kind of spell on me as I watched it. That approach, at once hypnotic and humane, may be enough to give the film the feel of a rich, rewarding epic interior journey. You don’t necessarily need 3 hours to achieve that. 2 1/2 hours may be enough. But I’m excited to learn what you discover in watching the film a second time, and look forward to your review. Good luck. :)
Bennett Oliver
2022-03-19 03:00:46 +0000 UTCYes I do agree with a lot of your criticisms. And yet, for some reason, I am not fully sold on using them as the basis of an argument just yet. My reason for that has to do with the unfolding nature of everything. And the slow unraveling of such literal intertextuality going on there. It feels to me, like the experience of a creative person, letting go of their pretenses in a way that I felt very much a part of. And in order to get there, there has to be many phases and tedious tests of that mirroring, whether it's leading to a self-actualization or not. But at the same time, I'm feeling a lot of what you're feeling. I also struggled a bit with certain plot points, and yet still found them effective as they happened, because of how simply it is presented. But yah...I have a lot to contemplate for sure as I rewatch.
Deepfocuslens
2022-03-18 21:39:26 +0000 UTCSee, this is something I am pondering myself. I'm so so glad to see you bring it up. I need to watch again before I can review it for that reason. I do feel that the runtime, and the effect of it, is part of the experience as a whole. But, if we hone in on the details, I do wonder if it will feel redundant.
Deepfocuslens
2022-03-18 21:33:51 +0000 UTCAgree with you on all fronts.
Deepfocuslens
2022-03-18 21:32:25 +0000 UTCI think I'm a bit more taken with it than you, but I do agree with you that certain things were a too on the nose in terms of the mirroring. I also felt like devices such as him discovering the glaucoma, felt a bit too on the nose in terms of metaphor.
Deepfocuslens
2022-03-18 21:31:36 +0000 UTCI'm pretty much in agreement with Bennett for the most part. Overall I do think its good, but wish it wasn't so on the nose about it's themes or signaling the fact that the supporting characters clearly mirror different aspects of the protagonist. I definitely didn't buy that guy killing the photographer, even accidentally. Nonetheless, it's beautifully shot, well acted, and the pacing grew on me as it went along. I kinda wish it ended after the mute actress gives that monologue in the play. Now I'm curious about the other movie he made last year, "Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy."
Stephen
2022-03-18 05:15:28 +0000 UTCAgree, it's unforgetable experience. Probably my favorite film of 2021, though I saw it this year. Some scenes were so hypnotizing. For example, when Takatsuki continues the story to Yusuke in the car. The story itself, the way they are frame has immersive quality. A scene in the snow is indeed beautiful. A scene with the mute actress on stage near the end moved me a lot. There's a cool shot somewhere in the movie that stick in my head where Misaki and Yusuke are putting their hands up out of the car window, holding a cigarette.
Oskitello
2022-03-18 02:01:56 +0000 UTCOne question that I feel needs to be asked, and I go back and forth on this: given how much the first act is talked about and explained later on, do we really need the first 40 minutes of the film? It could be said that the wife plot line could serve better as backstory than as actual depiction, and it would cut drastically down on the runtime. That whole prologue feels too cut off from the rest of the film anyway, even if it serves as the source of Kafuku’s turmoil.
Bennett Oliver
2022-03-17 23:34:22 +0000 UTCI liked it but did not love it. This is no doubt a film with powerful moments and an incredible, eloquent knowingness about, amongst other things, the need to endure and move on from tragedy and the deceptive yet benevolent nature of acting—on stage and in life. I was very much moved by these moments and the overall story, but yet…there is an unevenness to the film. I felt that it was marred by having too much of an overly literary quality to it (it was based on several short stories by Haruki Murakami). The business with Kafuku’s wife—how she invented stories during and after sex, her sudden death—was too bizarre. It didn’t resonate with me so much as come off as pure writerly invention, an overly calculated story rather than something culled from real life (as opposed to the rest of the film). I also had problems with the plot involving the actor who may or may not have slept with Kafuku’s wife. For one thing, I don’t buy that he’s capable of committing the violence that seals his fate; there doesn’t seem to be any darkness in him. And his own story he tells as an addition to Oto’s story is not so much heartbreaking confession as puzzling (how does he know about the lamprey story if Oto told it the night before she died? She didn’t even remember it the morning after). It’s one self-referential story too many for me. The film indulges in that device, as well as intertextuality with Uncle Vanya, a little too much. But the film gets much more right than it does wrong. I loved all the scenes that dealt with the actors and their rehearsal of the play, particularly the ones that involve the mute actress who uses sign language. Her final scene onstage is a knockout, and is certainly an instance of intertextuality that works for me. And the film, most importantly, nails the central relationship—the one between Kafuku and his driver Watari. There’s a real, raw connection that is forged between them, free of writerly pretense, and it certainly helps the film deliver with the ending—the pilgrimage to what remains of Watari’s childhood home. However I may have felt about the off-putting, idiosyncratic artificiality surrounding the wife plot line, nothing felt fake about Kafuku’s catharsis in the snow. It’s a beautiful, moving scene, and everything the film wants to say about tragedy, regret, and how we lie as an act of love is said in that moment between them. There’s a lot of greatness in this film to make me wish it wasn’t so flawed. But, alas.
Bennett Oliver
2022-03-17 23:29:41 +0000 UTCI loved it. I have a very low tolerance for slow/boring movies but I found this one to be captivating. I think it was so engaging because the audience is left in the dark with everything. It is very much a movie where the events of the story happen with little fanfare. You don't get any monologues or exposition dialogue explaining a character's feelings. You just see what happens. It almost feels surreal. Especially when moments of extreme drama are doled out like its any other moment in life... which I guess is how it really would be. Like the [big event] that happens before the credits and seeing a reaction that seems like denial, then going through the entire movie thinking there was some layer of resentment/revenge driving the main character's actions, but then at the very end your interpretation of events ~seemingly~ is proven wrong. It's not that he didn't know about his wife's actions and you could even argue he might have condoned it, but even with that revelation we're uncertain how the character feels about it. I'm being vague to avoid accidental spoilers in the comments here which is detracting from my ability to say anything worthwhile. I'll just say I thought it was true art. Very understated but very raw and amazing.
Arthur Augustyn
2022-03-17 22:21:49 +0000 UTCI think it rivals Titane for best movie of 2021. The camera work and editing is restrained, but never in a way that feels too minimalist. It’s just really sincerely directed. Every performance was a home run. Like what other movie could make me cry during a sign language audition scene?? The score was as good if not better than Britell’s work on Underground Railroad. Such a gentle but powerful film that I can’t wait to watch again
Jared Angcanan
2022-03-17 21:39:06 +0000 UTCI was honestly not expecting to like it. Maybe appreciate it on one of those "ah, yes, well done" and give it a polite clap and then move on. But I was totally engrossed the entire time and then absolutely devastated in the last half hour or so. Watching it again next week in a theater. Didn't think a 3 hour dialog driven foreign language drama would touch me so much.
Tyler Shobe
2022-03-17 21:37:49 +0000 UTC
