Drive My Car (2021)
First of all - that gorgeous red classic Saab! My father had a Saab when I grew up, not a fancy red one like this, but still - underrated car brand.
I really struggled with the 40 minute “intro”. There needs to be something to establish his life before his loss, but I didn’t feel like it warranted 40 minutes of runtime for that. The movie did improve after that though once the narrative about the play and his relationship with the driver opened things up.
I generally really liked the script and its themes with intertwining a stage play and real life, how actors and artists uses the words written by others to deal with personal things. I found it interesting that the play was performed in multiple languages - including sign language. Not entirely sure what was supposed to convey with relation to the rest of the film though and I am sure I am missing some important elements by not being familiar with the plays in question here.
The framing of this story reminded me of one of my favorite films, Blue by Kieslowski. It has a similar theme about dealing with loss through artistic expression. But somehow this movie never really took off for me, even though it on paper has the elements for something great. I felt it lacked something in the cinematography and the performances. It looks good, but also somewhat sterile and flat. It is very neutral in its shots, and when the acting is also very restrained and introspective, there was little for me to work with. The director even says something to his own actors that captures what I felt was lacking, about there is clearly something going on between the characters but it also needs to reach the audience. It never got there for me.
Maybe there is some cultural and language barrier at work here, though I have several Wong Kar-wai movies that fully got under my skin, so there are other things that is keeping me from fully engaging with Drive My Car. It makes sense it has resonated well with the Oscar Academy in how it deals with actors and artists, but similar to how I felt about Day For Night, I don’t live in that kind of world and since most of this is played a very introspective way, it didn’t become a proper insight into that world.
In conclusion, I did find the film worth watching as it got over my threshold for not finding it a waste of time - which warrants 3 stars. But only just, and it might have been a great 2 hour film if the script was handled differently - because the script is great.
Watched for Tildes movie of the week
Rating: 3.5