Drive My Car (2021)

The critic hails the low-key Japanese marvel about truth, loss and a red Saab, praising the subtle glide of the storytelling and the director’s deft handling of eccentric character traits as everyday. It singles out the car-tone sanctuary of the old red Saab carrying souls in transit amid grief and connection.

The critic hails it as a haunting masterpiece of art and life, melancholy and wise. It follows an actor-director through experimental theater work and personal loss, finding catharsis in performance and human connection.

The review praises the film as an overwhelmingly powerful tale of guilt and confession centered on artists’ collaborations. It highlights the continuity between personal relationships and artistic achievements in a grandly literary drama.

The critic calls the film a quiet masterpiece that considers grief, love, work, and the power of art. It expands on its source material to explore an actor-director’s emotional journey and unexpected connection with his driver.

The review describes a deliberate, deeply moving tale of grief, renewal, and driving pleasure in this aching emotional epic. It adapts a short Murakami story into a slow, wise three-hour film that never feels overextended.

The film is a beautiful, enigmatic picture that rewards attention despite its long runtime, with Hamaguchi's direction refined and the performances of Nishijima and Miura delivering modulated portraits of melancholy. It stands out as a visually striking work teeming with ideas about grief, betrayal and creativity, and the most successful cinematic Murakami adaptation.

The critic praises Hamaguchi's expansion of the Murakami story into a three-hour drama that feels both claustrophobic and panoramic, highlighting the film's literary and dialogical power alongside a wordless coda evoking life's asymmetries.

The critic calls the film a supremely confident Haruki Murakami adaptation about a widowed actor bonding with his chauffeur while exploring the creative process, jealousy and guilt. It praises the satisfying layers of storytelling and fluid score but notes the three-hour runtime and Chekhov-heavy second half may require the right mindset.

The critic describes the three-hour film as profoundly beautiful and haunting, praising how it uses every second wisely in its tale of a bereaved actor-director and his red automobile, adapted from Murakami stories. It highlights the gradual, cool and clean style that builds to a dizzying effect on grief, infidelity and making peace with one's role.

Hamaguchi effectively adapts Murakami’s short story into a long but engaging film with intriguing narrative layers, attractive leads and a pleasant score. The director takes the source as a springboard, expanding it with twists while focusing on grief, secrecy and the car as a theatrical space.

The critic describes an understated and precise adaptation that reflects on language, emotion and loss through the central relationship between passenger and driver. The film finds intimacy in shared tasks and explores performance, memory and grief via extended rehearsals and road journeys.

The critic calls it a rambling but ultimately rewarding ride, praising its absorbing, technically assured exploration of love, loss, grieving and healing with poetic depths. The slow, ponderous three-hour pace and extended scenes are noted as drawbacks, but internalized performances and emotional payoffs in the closing act are singled out for praise.

The critic calls it a mesmerising three-hour meditation on the interior life of a theatre director, praising the glacial pace, lovely deadpan details about the wife’s creative process during sex, and the slow-burning narrative driven by infidelity and multilingual Uncle Vanya production. It notes a modicum of hope in the ending but only just.

The review highlights the film's voluptuous slowness and focus on the materiality of objects, textures, and surfaces in conveying mourning and longing, especially in the first act. It criticizes the later shift toward causal explanations and character backstories that dilute the initial opacity and sensuous appeal.

The critic calls the film a melancholy three-hour epic about grief and self-deception that rewards patience, singling out its stunning direction, acting, and one of the best scripts in years for making earned emotion feel real.

The critic calls it a brilliant, profound film that uses its long runtime to examine the complicated and pervasive power of grief with dramatic restraint and emotional resonance. Hamaguchi's patient pacing and focus on contradictory emotions in mourning are singled out for praise.

The critic finds the three-hour film engaging throughout despite its length, praising its sharp insights into love, loss, marriage, grief and the truths of acting on stage and off. They highlight the exceptional performances, especially by Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura, and the way conversations in the car reveal vulnerability.

The critic praises it as a rich, skillfully layered masterwork with flawless performances and a script that sticks in the brain, noting its leisurely pace but finding the grounded ambitions captivating overall.

The review praises the film's languorous, unhurried emotional introspection and its graceful expansion of Murakami's story into a melancholy meditation on pain, performance, and catharsis. The director's decisions to elongate quiet moments of conflict and revelation are highlighted as rewarding.

The critic calls it an ambitious yet quietly confident film that enthralls over its long runtime with subtlety and care, highlighting powerful performances and a deft touch that draws viewers into the story without feeling boring.

The critic finds the film a beautifully shot and brilliantly acted spectacle about lasting traumas and how artists deal with them, but notes it never quite justifies its alienated approach to the source material and can feel obtuse, especially for newcomers or over its long runtime.

The critic praises the film's strong opening prologue and its precise evocation of a fraught marriage but finds the later sections undermined by heavy-handed melodrama that fails to earn emotional investment. They note the many interesting flourishes and tangents but conclude the film sputters toward the end.