Film

Drive My Car

Name: Drive My Car
Genre: Drama
Released: 2021
Cast: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Masaki Okada, Reika Kirishima, Park Yu-rim

Drama
Slow-burning

A widowed theater director drives toward Hiroshima with a young chauffeur assigned by the festival, and in their silences and conversations, grief and connection unfold. Ryusuke Hamaguchi's masterpiece unfolds like a play itself—measured, layered, achingly attentive to how people accidentally reveal themselves. It's for anyone who believes a three-hour film can move like poetry.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love slow character studies where grief surfaces through small gestures, long silences and the patient ritual of rehearsing a play, and you enjoy talk that unfolds in cars.

Skip it if you need brisk plotting, since at close to three hours it moves at an unhurried pace that some viewers will find testing.

What it asks of you: Nearly three hours at a deliberate pace, with long stretches of talk and silence in which meaning accumulates rather than arriving in big scenes.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Shoplifters2018

Hirokazu Koreeda's portrait of a makeshift family surviving at the margins of Tokyo. Like Drive My Car, it finds profound dignity and love in people society has written off, using small moments—a meal, a gesture, a glance—to build devastating emotional weight.

But It moves slowly and obliquely. There's no plot momentum to carry you; you have to surrender to observation and let the film's rhythm become your rhythm.

After the Storm2016

Koreeda again, but this time about a divorced man reckoning with failure and fatherhood. It shares Drive My Car's interest in how people live beside grief rather than overcome it, and in the specific textures of Japanese domestic space and courtesy.

But The emotional payoffs are quiet to the point of invisibility. Some will find it moving; others will worry nothing is actually happening.

Moonlight2016

Barry Jenkins' three-act portrait of a young Black man's inner life, told through color, sound, and touch rather than exposition. Like Hamaguchi, Jenkins trusts silence and abstraction, building intimacy through what's unsaid and observed.

But The fragmented structure and lack of conventional plot may frustrate viewers looking for narrative momentum or clear resolution.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Drive My Car

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Ikiru1952

Both are Japanese films about aging artists reckoning with mortality through creative work and human connection; both trust silence and find beauty in ordinariness.

Kurosawa's masterpiece about a dying bureaucrat finding meaning in small acts of creation and care. It's the spiritual ancestor of Drive My Car—both films concern themselves with how people face mortality through work and connection, and both trust that a human life, however ordinary, contains profound tragedy and grace.

But It's seventy years old, in black and white, and shot in a style that feels deliberately distanced. Modern audiences often find it emotionally remote until the final act hits.

A Separation2011

Asghar Farhadi's investigation of a marriage dissolving under pressure. It shares Drive My Car's fascination with how people reveal themselves through dialogue, and how proximity—physical and temporal—can unlock confession and truth.

But It's deeply claustrophobic and morally ambiguous. There's no villain you can hate cleanly, which some find exhausting.

First Reformed2018

Paul Schrader's portrait of a pastor in crisis, shot in a narrow frame that traps you with his consciousness. Both films use constraint—of space, time, resources—to excavate what matters, and both end in acts of grace that aren't earned sentimentally.

But It's austere and formally punishing. The theological despair can feel unrelenting, and the film doesn't offer comfort.

Still Walking2008

Hirokazu Koreeda once more—a family gathers after years apart, and beneath the ordinary rhythms of cooking and conversation, old resentments and sorrows surface. It's the closest relative to Drive My Car's interest in how the past lives in the present.

But Almost nothing happens. If you need a plot, this film will feel like an endurance test.

The Farewell2019

Lulu Wang's film about a family deciding to hide a terminal diagnosis from their grandmother, built on the tension between what's said and what's known. It mirrors Drive My Car's exploration of secrets, obligation, and love expressed through restraint.

But The tone shifts between comedy and sadness; some viewers find that tonal instability jarring rather than moving.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Charlie Kaufman's only directorial feature is formally ambitious in ways that align with Drive My Car—layered, self-referential, about an artist failing to process grief and loss. Both films treat theater and performance as metaphors for the gaps between self and world.

But It's deliberately confusing and often exhausting. The postmodern structure alienates many viewers rather than drawing them in.

The Son2022

Florian Zeller adapts his own play about a man confronting his adult son's despair and his own failure as a father. Like Drive My Car, it's theatrical in its construction and ruthlessly focused on the spaces between people who love each other.

But It's claustrophobic and unrelenting in its focus on masculine damage. There's little lightness, and some may find it nihilistic.

Anatomy of a Fall2023

Both films are constructed like plays, built on dialogue and small gesture; both excavate the hidden interior of relationships through sustained observation and proximity.

Justine Triet's courtroom mystery about a marriage examined under legal scrutiny, told through dialogue and the architecture of a house. Like Drive My Car, it's built on what people won't say, and on how presence and proximity can become unbearable when you're forced to really listen.

But It's almost entirely dialogue in a courtroom or a house. The pacing is legal and glacial; audiences expecting thriller momentum will be disappointed.

A Ghost Story2017

Both films treat grief as a formal problem, not a plot point; both use long takes and silence to create an atmosphere where time and presence become the real subject.

David Lowery's formally radical film about grief, time, and presence—a ghost haunting the house where his wife remains. Like Drive My Car, it's about the impossibility of communicating across a gulf, and about how love persists in forms that can't be acknowledged or answered.

But It's strange, oblique, and visually arch. There's a twenty-minute monologue that will test your patience, and the film's metaphysical bent may feel pretentious.