You’ve probably heard people call it a "masterpiece." Or maybe you heard it’s "that three-hour Japanese movie about a red Saab." Both are true, honestly. But when Drive My Car swept through the awards circuit a few years back—becoming the first Japanese film ever nominated for the Best Picture Oscar—it wasn't just because of some high-brow trend. It’s because Ryusuke Hamaguchi figured out how to film the sound of a human heart breaking in real-time.
It's a long watch. Three hours. 179 minutes, to be exact. The opening credits don’t even show up until the forty-minute mark, which is a total power move. Most movies would have finished their first act by then, but Drive My Car is just getting warmed up. It’s based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, but Hamaguchi expands it into this sprawling, meditative exploration of grief, infidelity, and the weird way we use art to hide from ourselves.
What is Drive My Car actually about?
On the surface, it’s simple. Yusuke Kafuku is a stage actor and director. He’s married to Oto, a screenwriter who comes up with her best stories while they’re having sex. Then, she dies suddenly. Two years later, Kafuku travels to Hiroshima to direct a multilingual production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Because of insurance reasons, he isn't allowed to drive himself. He’s assigned a young, stoic woman named Misaki Watari as his chauffeur.
They sit in his red 1989 Saab 900 Turbo. They drive. They listen to cassette tapes of his late wife reading the lines of the play.
That's basically the movie. But the "basically" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The car becomes a confessional. It’s a mobile sanctuary where two people who have mastered the art of shutting down finally start to leak their secrets.
The Murakami Connection
If you’ve read Haruki Murakami, you know the vibe: jazz, cats, pasta, and men who are slightly lost in their own lives. Drive My Car comes from his collection Men Without Women. But Hamaguchi didn't just adapt the one story. He pulled in elements from other stories in the book, like Scheherazade and Kino, to flesh out the relationship between Kafuku and Oto.
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The film manages to capture that specific Murakami loneliness without feeling like a caricature. It’s grounded. While the book is quite internal, the movie uses the physical act of driving—the shifting of gears, the smoke out the sunroof—to make that internal stuff visible.
Why the multilingual play matters
A huge chunk of the movie focuses on the rehearsals for Uncle Vanya. Kafuku casts actors who speak different languages: Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, Tagalog, and even Korean Sign Language. They all perform in their native tongues.
It sounds like a gimmick. It’s not.
By stripping away the ability to rely on literal "understanding," the actors have to actually look at each other. They have to feel the rhythm of the other person’s breathing. Park Yoo-rim, who plays the mute actress Gong Yoon-a, is incredible. Her performance in sign language is often more communicative than the spoken dialogue of the other characters.
There is this one scene where she and another actor are rehearsing in a park. No music. Just the sound of the wind and the sharp snap of her hands moving through the air. It’s one of the most intense things you’ll see on screen, and they aren't even "doing" anything yet.
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The Saab 900 Turbo as a character
Let’s talk about the car. In the original story, it was a yellow convertible. Hamaguchi changed it to a red hardtop. Why? Because red pops against the grey highways of Hiroshima.
The car is a 1989 Saab 900. It’s quirky. It’s old-school. For Kafuku, it’s his office. He knows every sound the engine makes. When Misaki takes the wheel, he’s terrified of losing that control. But she drives so smoothly he eventually forgets she’s even there. That’s the turning point. When you let someone else drive your most private space, you’re letting them into your head.
Facing the "Slow" Allegations
Yes, it’s slow.
People complain about the runtime, and look, I get it. We live in the TikTok era. But Drive My Car uses its length as a tool. It forces you to sit with the characters. You feel the passage of time. You feel the weight of the silence. If this movie were ninety minutes long, the ending wouldn't work. You need to earn that final drive to Hokkaido.
It’s also surprisingly funny in a dry, awkward way. The interactions between the actors during the rehearsal dinners have this cringe-comedy energy that feels very real. It’s not all doom and gloom. It’s just... life.
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The Core Themes: Grief and the "Truth"
The movie keeps coming back to this idea: can we ever truly know another person? Kafuku loved his wife. He also knew she was cheating on him. He never confronted her because he was afraid that if he asked for the truth, his whole world would vanish.
There’s a monologue toward the end—delivered by a younger actor named Takatsuki—that basically sums up the film's philosophy. He tells Kafuku that if you really want to see another person, you have to start by looking at yourself "honestly and deeply."
It’s a gut punch.
We spend so much time analyzing why people hurt us, but we rarely look at why we let them, or how we hide our own shadows. Drive My Car argues that art isn't an escape from reality; it’s the only way we can actually face it. When Kafuku performs the final scene of Uncle Vanya, he isn't just acting anymore. He’s living the words.
Taking Action: How to Watch and Process
If you haven't seen it yet, or if you saw it once and felt overwhelmed, here is how to actually approach Drive My Car to get the most out of it.
- Don't watch it on your phone. Seriously. The sound design—the hum of the tires on the asphalt, the click of the cassette player—is half the experience. Use good speakers or headphones.
- Commit to the "First Hour." Treat the first forty minutes as a prologue. When the credits finally roll, that’s when the "real" movie starts. If you can make it to the credits, you’re hooked.
- Pay attention to the hands. Misaki’s hands on the steering wheel, the actors' hands in the play. Hamaguchi focuses on physical gestures because words often fail these characters.
- Read the short story afterward. It’s in Murakami's Men Without Women. Seeing how Hamaguchi took a 40-page story and turned it into a 3-hour epic is a masterclass in adaptation.
- Watch for the "Smoking" scene. There is a moment where two characters hold their cigarettes out of the sunroof of the moving car. It is one of the most beautiful shots in modern cinema. It represents a shared silence that says more than any dialogue could.
Drive My Car is a film that demands patience, but it pays it back with interest. It’s about the long road we have to travel to finally forgive ourselves. Whether you’re a fan of Japanese cinema or just someone looking for a story that actually respects your intelligence, it’s a journey worth taking.
Find a quiet evening, put your phone in the other room, and just let Misaki drive you for a while. You’ll be surprised where you end up.