1136 Drive My Car

[Never Cursed]

Drive My Car



Only Ryusuke Hamaguchi—with his extraordinary sensitivity to the mysterious resonances of human interactions—could sweep up international awards and galvanize audiences everywhere with a pensive, three-hour movie about an experimental staging of an Anton Chekhov play, presented in nine languages and adapted from Haruki Murakami stories. With Drive My Car, the Japanese director has confirmed his place among contemporary cinema's most vital voices. Two years after his wife's unexpected death, Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) arrives in Hiroshima to direct a production of Uncle Vanya for a theater festival and, through relationships with an actor (Masaki Okada) with whom he shares a tangled history and a chauffeur (Toko Miura) with whom he develops a surprising rapport, finds himself confronting emotional scars. This quietly mesmerizing tale of love, art, grief, and healing is ultimately a cathartic exploration of what it means to go on living when there seems to be no road ahead.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 2K digital master, approved by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with Hamaguchi
• Program about the making of the film, featuring behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with actors Reika Kirishima, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Masaki Okada, Yoo-rim Park, Dae-Young Jin, and others
• Press conference footage from the film's premiere at the 2021 Cannes International Film Festival
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by author Bryan Washington

[CSM126]

Janus has US/Canadian rights to Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car

Maybe I’m just dumb, but I see nothing indicating Janus’ involvement. Unless they’ve rebranded as a Canadian company called Films We Like.

[dwk]

The page seems to be down now, but it said that the release was in association with Janus Films

[Buttery Jeb]

Janus has US/Canadian rights to Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car

Drive My Car is opening at Film Forum on November 24; but there's no word on their calendar about it being handled by Janus Films.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Thing is there's no word on their calendar about it being handled by anyone. My guess is Janus has embargoed the news ahead of an official announcement, which would also explain why it's gone missing from the Films We Like site. We'll probably hear something official around the NYFF screenings early next month.

[yoloswegmaster]

Janus, alongside a company called Sideshow, have acquired the rights to Drive My Car, and will premiere on the Criterion Channel sometime after its Nov. 24 theatrical date.

[hearthesilence]

I hope Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car gets its own thread - it was by far the biggest surprise for me at the NYFF. Granted I didn't know much about the director's work, but over the course of three hours it grew better and better, turning into an enormously rich and complex film about dramatic art. Namely, what artists get out of creating and interpreting art, and perhaps what the audience gets from viewing it too. That may sound pretty broad, but it explores those ideas in great, thorough detail.

An adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story, he greatly expands it, primarily with material taken from other stories in the same anthology. (It superficially brings to mind what Robert Altman did in planning Short Cuts, but the approach bears much more fruit here.) More importantly, he takes Chekov's Uncle Vanya and greatly expands upon its use, making it the heart of the film.

I was so impressed, I was throughly disappointed that I let the opportunity to see The Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy pass me by - IIRC it played two consecutive mornings over the weekend. Fortunately, The Wheel of Fortune... opens a weeks from now, followed right behind by Drive My Car.

[dwk]

Drive My Car now has a page on Janus' site

[yoloswegmaster]

Drive My Car now has a page on Janus' site

The U.S screening schedule for this has been posted.

[DarkImbecile]

All the critics associations aren't lying: this is a truly wonderful film, a deeply satisfying blend of the emotional and intellectual that manages to be novelistic in its patience and attention to detail while also exquisitely cinematic in its visual composition and performances.

I somehow had the impression from skimming coverage out of Cannes that this was another example of the Asian slow cinema movement à la Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tsai Ming-Liang; instead, Hamaguchi has crafted a three-hour film that flies by as you're watching it, but feels after the fact like you lived in it for days. His script (co-written with Takamasa Oe) deftly flits between being melancholy, sexy, funny, tragic, and moving while exploring the difficulties of understanding and communicating with others — even those we're closest to — and the potential for art to help us do exactly that — even with those from whom we're very different.

If I was going to share a nitpick, it'd be that the film peaks with

SpoilerShow

the long conversation between Hideto Nishijima's Kafuku and Masaki Okada's Takatsuki in the car, and the remaining ~30 or so minutes after Takatsuki's storyline ends can't quite live up to the emotional highs of that sequence, despite the multiple compelling revelations and realizations that come after. Or maybe I was just primed for the emotional tension running through that scene more than the catharsis that comes after, which may hit me harder on a subsequent viewing.

Regardless, this is one of the very best of the year, deserves all its past and future critical and awards attention, and drives me to invest the time to check out the rest of Hamaguchi's filmography.

[DarkImbecile]

Good Hamaguchi interview with Bilge Ebiri in Vulture on his technique and good insights on both Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

[therewillbeblus]

If I was going to share a nitpick, it'd be that the film peaks with

SpoilerShow

the long conversation between Hideto Nishijima's Kafuku and Masaki Okada's Takatsuki in the car, and the remaining ~30 or so minutes after Takatsuki's storyline ends can't quite live up to the emotional highs of that sequence, despite the multiple compelling revelations and realizations that come after. Or maybe I was just primed for the emotional tension running through that scene more than the catharsis that comes after, which may hit me harder on a subsequent viewing.

I felt similarly, however the culmination of these two souls' alt-intimacy during the final visit seemed deliberately anticathartic. I get the sense that this isn't what most people took away from the ending, and perhaps it wasn't within Hamaguchi's intentions, but it felt appropriate to the central theme from the conversation between Kafuku and Takatsuki in the car:

SpoilerShow

Particularly Takatsuki's wisdom that we cannot fully 'know' or 'access' another in absolute harmony, but that focusing on being honest with ourselves allows for us to get as close as possible to forging authentic intimacy. It's a necessary compromise we must make, but one that inspires liberation from these futile yearnings for the impossible that result in further suffering, and informs the bittersweet scenes to come that embrace this surrender. At the scene of Watari's home, Kafuku's breakdown/breakthrough is both grasping at straws for meaning and finding compromised acceptance in what 'is'. Neither party can fully comfort the other or themselves to a mirage of catharsis, but that surrender without resistance is itself growth. They can feel their own energy through the safe space held unconditionally by the other person's presence and transparency, and so they can carry on with their respective traumas but move forward in facing fears and leaning into discomfort, both alone and 'knowing' that they are not alone, broadly, in their feelings- even if so in the specificity of them.

The ability to hold space for seemingly paradoxical truths, in how we are destined to indulge our pain in isolation and unison impermanently, is the filmmaker's greatest achievement here- and he accomplishes this in part through the deliberate, attentive, empathic pacing. I loved the detailing of each moment as significant without oversaturating the narrative space in excessive inertia, as some of those reference-auteurs you mentioned might opt to do.

[Persona]

A truly wondrous film that allows itself all the time it needs to breathe but never lacking for interest or eccentricity, which is sometimes missing from slice-of-life "slow cinema."

For me it is difficult to say the film peaks at any given point. Yes, there are numerous times where it could have ended. But the fact that it goes on feels in keeping with the way the film itself moves and what it depicts. For my part, I would have sorely missed some of the film's final beats if it had ended a half hour earlier.

If I have any silly complaint, it's that I wish that the music that appears in the second half of the trailer was used more than once in the film -- as it feels like such a poignant musical expression of the film's mood and aspirations. Nonetheless, I was floored by this thing and its cumulative power (you don't realize how the emotional impact will sneak up on you until a good hour in or more) is truly the work of a top-tier dramaturg.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Coming to HBO Max on March 2nd

[Red Screamer]

I didn’t realize a movie in the Bergman mold could still make this big of a splash so I didn’t expect Drive My Car to be a talky, heavy, plainly styled drama whose main spectacle is the rehearsal of a play which, surprise, holds a mirror to the turmoil of the characters’ lives. I enjoyed it overall but was underwhelmed. It’s tastefully predictable and well-written, in an English major kind of way (i.e. anyone familiar with Uncle Vanya will know what note the movie is going to end on almost as soon as the play is introduced.

SpoilerShow

Whereas in the play the ending comes as an extraordinary shock, almost hard to swallow.

Precisely directed it is; Chekhov it’s not. Hamaguchi’s careful polish scrubs away the kind of lively messes that spill from Chekhov’s work in order to arrange his chessboard of themes and motifs—the two climactic scenes both consist of characters swapping therapeutic monologues (though I agree with DarkImbecile that one of those scenes is the best in the film). I prefer Burning, the other beloved Murakami adaptation of recent years, for the sense of play in its performances and for Lee’s skillful, lyrical handling of limited point of view. Drive My Car is basically restricted to the perspective of its main character but it shies away from subjectivity, instead approaching the material at a semi-objective third-person distance. I also don’t love its idea of art as veiled confession, a personal catharsis for the artist which incidentally has the power to heal the audience’s scars.

[DarkImbecile]

We’ll call that a Red Screamer Rave

[feihong]

I didn’t realize a movie in the Bergman mold could still make this big of a splash so I didn’t expect Drive My Car to be a talky, heavy, plainly styled drama whose main spectacle is the rehearsal of a play which, surprise, holds a mirror to the turmoil of the characters’ lives. I enjoyed it overall but was underwhelmed. It’s tastefully predictable and well-written, in an English major kind of way (i.e. anyone familiar with Uncle Vanya will know what note the movie is going to end on almost as soon as the play is introduced.

SpoilerShow

Whereas in the play the ending comes as an extraordinary shock, almost hard to swallow.

Precisely directed it is; Chekhov it’s not. Hamaguchi’s careful polish scrubs away the kind of lively messes that spill from Chekhov’s work in order to arrange his chessboard of themes and motifs—the two climactic scenes both consist of characters swapping therapeutic monologues (though I agree with DarkImbecile that one of those scenes is the best in the film). I prefer Burning, the other beloved Murakami adaptation of recent years, for the sense of play in its performances and for Lee’s skillful, lyrical handling of limited point of view. Drive My Car is basically restricted to the perspective of its main character but it shies away from subjectivity, instead approaching the material at a semi-objective third-person distance. I also don’t love its idea of art as veiled confession, a personal catharsis for the artist which incidentally has the power to heal the audience’s scars.

Hamaguchi is a filmmaker I've held off on discovering––I actually have several of his movies lined up to watch, but I keep endlessly putting it off. Your take on this film puts into perspective for me some of the things that make me nervous about this director––the semi-objective distance you talk about, the emphasis on catharsis passing to the audience, the restriction of perspective––these are things I've seen just in clips of Hamaguchi's films, which make me really suspect I won't like the experience. I still plan to watch this one before the Academy Awards, but it's interesting to see some of my misgivings manifested and articulated by someone who's seen the film.

[Michael Kerpan]

Apparently Hamaguchi is a big fan of Naruse, which predisposes me in his favor. Alas, I liked Happy Hour only moderately. Still waiting to see Drive My Car. Does HBO Max allow renting a single film -- or must one subscribe?

[swo17]

You can do a free two-week trial

[Jack Phillips]

Apparently Hamaguchi is a big fan of Naruse, which predisposes me in his favor.

Also a big fan of Rohmer, as is evident in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy.

[cdnchris]

Just received an email that Criterion will be releasing this in July.

COMING TO THE CRITERION COLLECTION JULY 2022

Additional details to follow with the complete July announcement.

Two years after his wife’s unexpected death, Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a renowned stage actor and director, receives an offer to direct a production of Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There, he meets Misaki Watari (Toko Miura), a taciturn young woman assigned by the festival to chauffeur him in his beloved red Saab 900. As the production’s premiere approaches, tensions mount amongst the cast and crew, not least between Yusuke and Koshi Takatsuki, a handsome TV star who shares an unwelcome connection to Yusuke’s late wife. Forced to confront painful truths raised from his past, Yusuke begins - with the help of his driver – to face the haunting mysteries his wife left behind. Adapted from Haruki Murakami’s short story, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s DRIVE MY CAR is a haunting road movie traveling a path of love, loss, acceptance, and peace.

[Roscoe]

And on Blu-Ray.com

https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=30358

[derekbd]

I'd like to assume that Criterion will do a 4K disc for their release.

[therewillbeblus]

I don't see why they would for this and not The Worst Person in the World, which is not to say they won't, but certainly not enough of a visual-heavy distinction between them to warrant an assumption

[swo17]

If this wins an Oscar and/or has a 4K source available