Drive My Car (2021) Review: Hamaguchi’s Hiroshima Grief Engine

Is Drive My Car worth watching?

Yes — if you can give it the evening. It is not background. It earns a 87% Celluloid Score from editorial rating (98), Metascore (91), Letterboxd (4.2/5), and IMDb (7.6/10). The 82% audience snapshot is display-only and is not in the composite.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Japanese original runs 179 minutes. We file it on the Japan hub with Shoplifters as the other internationally crowned Japanese drama of the era.

A car, a play, a driver

Yusuke Kafuku cannot metabolize his wife’s death; Hiroshima’s theatre festival gives him Uncle Vanya and Misaki, a driver who knows the roads and, eventually, the wound. The multilingual rehearsal is not a gimmick; it is how people share a text when they cannot share a life. Park Yu-rim’s mute Sonya is one of the 2020s’ great supporting turns.

Duration as ethics

Editorial 98, Metascore 91, Letterboxd 4.2, IMDb 7.6: 87% composite. The IMDb lag is people who wanted a plot in act one. The plot is the drive.

Verdict

Watch it once without a phone. Then read Chekhov if the play scenes hooked you. Details.