Drive My Car: Not your average road movie

 

Japanese language ‘Drive My Car’ has earned a very well-deserved Academy Award for Best International Foreign Film 2022.

And the Oscar for Best International Feature Film goes 'Drive My Car' (Japan). Congratulations! #Oscars pic.twitter.com/JXd6SRrTri

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) March 28, 2022

The writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi has finely crafted this monumental take on the journey towards self-understanding, exploring love, loss, grief and guilt along the way. It is based on Haruki Murakami short stories, a surprise given its 2 hour 59 minutes duration. 

Film critic Douglas Laman has explored how Hamguchi and co-writer Takamasa Oe have interwoven two famous plays, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Anton Chekkov’s Uncle Vanya, into the characters’ inner lives:

'In leaning on a work of the past like Uncle Vanya, Drive My Car excels on countless levels, including in finding a way to capture the interior voices of characters who refuse to overtly communicate.'

Hidetoshi Nishijima, as stage actor and director Yūsuke Kafuku, gives a first-class performance which is complemented by an outstanding cast. It is a truly international gathering, especially the ensemble required for the multi-lingual Uncle Vanya production. In addition to Japanese, the actors use Korean, Korean sign-language, Mandarin and English.

The car, a red 1987 Saab 900 Turbo, is a character itself. When Kafuku directs a production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima, his assigned driver, Misaki Watari (Tôko Miura), is an unlikely confessor as they share their personal nightmares and confront the past.