Movie Review: Drive My Car (Doraibu mai kâ)

 

Michael's Movie Grade: A+

An original and incredibly moving film. 

On paper it would seem that this film should be boring. It is slow paced, three hours long and most of the conflict is internal. Yet this movie is anything but boring. I sat in the theater captivated by everything that was happening on screen. When the end credits started rolling, I found myself profoundly moved by what I just saw and amazed that three hours had passed by. Much of this is due to the characters. All of our main characters are far from one note and each one proves themselves to be more than meets the eye. Even the characters that at first seem like they would be walking stereotypes, prove to be so much more. For instance there is one character who at first seems simply like his role is to be the young 20-something kid who only thinks of himself. Yet there is so much more to his character than that. He had worked with the main character's late wife and was in love with her himself. Rather than this becoming simply a wedge between them or him holding this against the main character, like a lesser film would do, this is what makes him feel a deep emotional connection with our main character. Over the course of the film this leads to some shockingly deep and moving moments between the two. Our main character is an actor/director on the stage, who years later is still dealing with the death of his wife. Yet there is more depth than him simply missing someone he loved. He is left to deal with many complex emotions and is afraid to face his real self or the part of him he has been hiding from himself for so long. His relationship with the woman who is driving him to and from work is also not simple. It would be easy to just make this character a friend who lends him emotional support when he needs it. However, there is much more to this than that and she needs emotional support just as much as he does. All this would of course fall apart if the cast wasn't up to the task of the emotional subtlety. However everyone in the cast is perfect in their roles and it does not take long into this movie until you simply except all these characters as if they were real people. They become more than characters in a movie, but our friends. It has been said that movies should make you feel like you are not watching a movie but instead that you are observing real life. Well that is what I felt watching this film. This is a true emotional experience that made me feel like I was falling in love with movies all over again.

Simply put this is a masterpiece.