Vibe
Actor-director Yūsuke Kafuku stages Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima after his wife’s death and is assigned driver Misaki. Theatre, driving and recorded dialogue become systems of repetition through which guarded people slowly learn to listen to one another. Kafuku’s rehearsal method provides the film’s central theory of listening. Actors repeat Chekhov across Japanese, Korean Sign Language and other languages without being asked to immediately “perform” emotion. Meaning is expected to emerge through duration, rhythm and attention to other bodies. That method mirrors the film’s relationships. Kafuku and Misaki do not reach intimacy by confessing everything quickly; they learn to inhabit silence together until speech becomes possible. The red Saab is therefore a moving rehearsal room. Oto’s recorded voice continues reading lines from Uncle Vanya, turning the car into a space where Kafuku can repeat both theater and marriage long after his wife is gone. Misaki’s presence eventually changes the ritual because another listener enters what had been private repetition. The film’s three-hour length is necessary to that transformation. Hamaguchi makes time itself the condition under which grief stops being a closed loop and becomes shareable.
Watch for
- Watch repeated Uncle Vanya rehearsals; the actors’ understanding changes before the words themselves change.
- Notice the red Saab as both private refuge and forced shared space once Misaki becomes the driver.
- Track how multiple spoken and signed languages coexist in the stage production without being treated as novelty.
- Pay attention to long stretches of listening; Hamaguchi often delays visible reaction until another person’s speech has been fully received.
Production notes
BFI lists a 2021, 179-minute film directed by Hamaguchi and co-written with Takamasa Oe. Cannes awarded them Best Screenplay, and the Academy records it as the 2022 Best International Feature winner; Hamaguchi was also nominated for directing. BFI lists Drive My Car as a 179-minute 2021 Japanese film directed by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi and co-written with Takamasa Oe. Hidetoshi Nishijima plays Kafuku, Tōko Miura plays Misaki and Masaki Okada plays Takatsuki. The film adapts Haruki Murakami while expanding the source through Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and a multilingual theater production. Cannes awarded Hamaguchi and Oe Best Screenplay in 2021. The Academy later recorded Drive My Car as the 2022 winner for Best International Feature Film; Hamaguchi was also nominated for directing, and the film received additional major nominations. The production’s international success is striking because it is dialogue-heavy, deliberately paced and nearly three hours long. Its circulation demonstrated that contemporary Japanese art cinema could achieve broad critical reach without simplifying its formal demands.
Trivia
- BFI lists Drive My Car at 179 minutes.
- Ryūsuke Hamaguchi co-wrote the film with Takamasa Oe.
- Hidetoshi Nishijima and Tōko Miura play Kafuku and Misaki.
- The screenplay won a prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
- Drive My Car won the 2022 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, and Hamaguchi was nominated for directing.
Legacy
As the newest film in the Top 100, Drive My Car carries the heaviest recency burden but has exceptional early evidence of canon formation and marks Hamaguchi’s emergence as a global major director. Drive My Car is the newest film in the Top 100 and therefore the one most vulnerable to future reassessment. Its current placement at #96 is intentionally conservative. Yet the early evidence of canon formation is unusually strong: Cannes recognition, Academy Award success and widespread critical attention to Hamaguchi’s method of performance, duration and conversation. Its historical function is already distinct. The film made Hamaguchi the most internationally visible Japanese director of his generation and placed theatrical rehearsal, multilingual performance and long conversational form at the center of a global film event. Unlike recent Japanese breakthroughs driven by genre or animation, Drive My Car achieved this through literary adaptation and patient dramaturgy. That difference is why recency does not make it disposable, even if its exact rank should remain auditable over time. The multilingual Uncle Vanya production also broadens Hamaguchi’s idea of performance beyond verbal fluency. Actors must respond to rhythm, gesture and presence even when they do not understand every language being spoken. That staging makes listening physical and reinforces the film’s central argument: understanding another person is never the same as immediately decoding them.