Drive My Car

Commencement

I wanted my first film of 2022, to be unique, so that I can remember the experience of watching it. This is the first time I’m writing a film review, it’s obviously not my cup of tea, but I tried my best to do so.

Why This Film?

When I was browsing through the online movie catalog, the title of the film caught my attention. The car enthusiast in me wanted to checkout this film, all because of the title.

I’m not new to Japanese media or film. One of my favourite film, Battle Royale, is a Japanese classic known throughout the world. So, I was ready to watch what this film has to offer.

Let’s Begin

Since I selected this film on the basis of it’s title, I was not disappointed. The film shows a really beautiful, well kept Saab 900, finished in red colour. It’s always a eye candy for me to see classic cars with Japanese number plates.

Any car guy wouldn’t allow someone else to drive his car, but in the film the Yusuke (the main lead) takes the director job at a theater festival, where they assign him an exclusive chauffeur, Misaki. Misaki play’s an important role and we can see that through out the end of the film.

Yusuke, has to direct a play and in this play you see variety of characters. I really liked the way the play uses multilingual dialogues, since the actors in the play are from different countries. I was reminded of Koe no Katachi but in the live action format, because of one character in the film.

As the film progresses, you get to see how both Yusuke and Misaki open up to each other. They share their stories, regretting for what they did. There is this one line in the film which I liked “Those who survive, keep thinking about the dead.”. This line expresses the feeling which we have when we lose someone dear to us, but the memories of them are still with us, the only thing which we can do now is “we must keep on living”.

The film is about 3 hours long, but I didn’t knew how fast the time went. Those 3 hours felt like 10 minutes to me, that shows how much you get immersed into the film.

At the end of the film, you see Misaki unlocking and getting into the car. The car is Saab 900, finished in red colour, but the only two things which are different, is the number plate of the car and Misaki herself.

Wrap Up

Overall, I’m really happy that I went with this film. I was surprised to know that it was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival where it won three awards.

This is the Day 4 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round Two)