Drive My Car

Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi makes it easy to stay put. The film passes at a glide.

I really appreciated this film. It's very slow moving and you have to stick with it.

The pieces Hamaguchi assembles don’t seem to add up, and yet when it’s over you may feel that the whole is much, much larger than the sum of the parts, in ways beyond the power to articulate.

Hamaguchi’s film shows that it will remain beautiful, and viewers will forget that they are not in the red Saab, and instead, they’re together, watching a movie.

It’s a well made, interesting film, but surely no masterpiece.

It’s mysterious, impenetrable, creeping forward on many fronts like a lava flow of ideas and nuance. It’s also throat-catchingly beautiful, as sad as a funeral, and wise in a way few films ever aspire to be.

When preparing myself to see Drive My Car for the first time, I made sure to get to a cinema and allow myself to be captivated for the three-hour runtime.

Drive My Car will not be for everyone, but for those willing, your patience will be rewarded in the purest form of empathy available for cinephiles this year.

Misaki and Kafuku are surrounded by an incredible ensemble of characters with the capacity to astonish, but the central relationship that develops in Drive My Car fuels Hamaguchi’s examination of how people choose to process long-internalized feelings.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s three-hour drama of Chekov and the difficulties of human connection did not miss connecting with audiences and critics.