Excitement abounds in Hiroshima after 'Drive My Car' wins Oscar

I thought it was very nicely shot, but overly long, with irrelevant scenes (glaucoma?) and plot devices. The main character is forced to use a driver according to a rule but another character in the same production is seen driving? More than anything though, I went into the film without knowing who wrote it, but within thirty minutes was thinking "are these Haruki Murakami characters?" to which the answer was of course yes. Murakami is extremely successful of course, but I feel his characters have an overly stylized mix of Western and Japanese character traits, along with a very high degree of self-absorption. They strike me as artistic devices or creations, and I struggle to connect with them as real people. Plenty of dramatists out there can create engaging characters without equipping them with extreme backstories we are supposed to swallow whole.

Due to the award, the obvious movie to compare it with is "Parasite", which was far superior.

Always watch the rare gems.

Nowadays Great Japanese films which are 100 times better than recent popular ones can be watchable on very high quality.

Try Shohei Imamura and Masaki Kobayashi films.

The film's so highly hyped, but everything about it is bad. Spoiler alert of a spoiled premise.

The protagonist watching his wife have a quickie and she dies. He's stricken by his (why?) love for her, never challenging her affair with even a question, while they talk of plots when making love? Give me a break. Scenes so trite, the cringeworthiness exceeds shoulder tightening, it makes one want to throw yuzu at the screen.

He then goes and gets a driver because it's policy of a theatre company which doesn't allow him to drive his own car with his dead wife's recorded talking? Aw, gee, too bad. But maybe you and your driver are going to have a great relationship. Ya never know. And that driver is a young female with nothing about her that says she'd even get a rirekisho looked at? No way. Not in Japan, ever. Anyone who as worked in the Japanese workforce knows how the Japanese hire. An established high end theatre company would not trust this girl to drive a VIP. It's an impossible story.

If someone hopes this is a film that compares to the last foreign film academy winner from Japan in 'Departures', they'll be high disappointed. I was.

Drive my Car is a dumb film.

Recommended for those who want to spend 3 hours in vain.

Japan, like Italy and France, had its golden age of movie making in the 50s and 60s. It's really been all downhill since then, with a few speed bumps along the way like Itami's 'Tampopo' in 1985. In fact, film as an art form seems dead these days everywhere.

Terrible movie

Poorly produced

Poorly acted

Anti climatic story

Complete waste of time and money

Strange circles you mix in @smithinjapan.

 Busan is a lovely place.

TokyoJoe, agree. Used to go there often as a newbie to renew my visa. It reminded me a bit of San Francisco.

Only one person I know had even heard of the movie before the Awards, and he is American. Now it's selling out everywhere, which is predictable. So far in interviews on the movie, again, which had not been in the news at all until then, not one person said they liked it. One guy said it was long and he would, "Think about the movie anytime I think life is hard", and another say, "It was long."

Anyway, one thing I DIDN'T now about this was the movie is based on a short story by Murakami (which is now also suddenly selling out).

South Korea's Busan was initially where "Drive My Car" was to be filmed, but that plan fell through due to the pandemic, so the filming location was switched to Japan.

The problem of red tapes still discourages production companies from making films in Japan although there are many remarkable landscapes. Hiroshima made some effort to host the movie team... and it pays off.

This is a loooong movie! 

Congratulations for winning the Oscar!

I agree, nearly three hours. Kind of wish there was an intermission at the half-way point. The movie was adapted from a short story, but it seems they made a "novel" out of it!

This is a loooong movie! The first 40 minutes are captivating. And from the 2-hour mark, there is 15-minute exchange that pulls you in. But outside that, the movie can feel rather slow.

South Korea's Busan was initially where "Drive My Car" was to be filmed, but that plan fell through due to the pandemic, so the filming location was switched to Japan.

Interesting. Busan is a lovely place.