Drive My Car: An Oscar Game Changer from Japan

Life moves slowly. Loss. Grief. So much happens in Drive My Car, Japan’s entry for the Best International Film Academy Award, it is amazing that the movie is only two and a half hours long. That it has been named Best Film by the venerable NY and LA Film Critics can make you think, Parasite all over again, but that Best Picture Oscar winner from Korea is action-packed, a satiric bloody nightmare romp, while the longeuers of Drive My Car drive home deeper, more difficult truths, and how we process them. An acclaimed theater director (Hidetoshi Nishijima) loses his beautiful wife. Two years into his grief, he takes a job directing Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. A young woman (Toko Miura) from a remote mountain town Hokkaido, dour, her face expressing oceans of sadness, chauffeurs him around in his red Saab. Producing Chekhov in Japan may represent one aspect of multi-culturalism, but the players speak many languages, including sign. And perhaps most poignantly, it takes more than translation to make inner lives connect.

With Oscars looming, Drive My Car makes sense, even though it is unusual for a foreign language film to make the list. And I would even add Pedro Almodovar’s Parallel Mothers for a Best Picture nomination. Belfast and West Side Story have been lauded, at the top of many critics’ best picture lists. I would add Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. Other films, entertaining as they are, make a solid second tier: Power of the Dog, Licorice Pizza, Being the Ricardos, Don’t Look Up. A solid list will materialize. Don’t look for the epic sweep. Like a haiku, Drive My Car, goes eternal.