Drive My Car
Year: 2021
Rating: Unrated
Length: 179 minutes / 2.98 hours
There are movies made to be entertaining, then there are movies that gaze into the soul of human existence and dare us to blink. Drive My Car (2021) is the latter. Grief is such a complex topic that few have successfully tackled it meaningfully or with the depth that this film does. It’s slow, steady, and meandering through various subplots, but it eventually gets its point across in the most stoic ways possible. After all, it’s challenging to grieve for someone who you know has wronged you.
I am no stranger to three-hour-long foreign films, but even this one pushed my limits. The problem is, I’m not entirely sure what I would have cut from it to make it any shorter (although, they probably could have ended this film a little earlier since the last scene made little sense to me). All the subplots combine to make a meaningful statement of the multi-faceted approach to grieving. And perhaps having this movie be three hours long drives home the idea that grief and patience are inexorably linked—that it’s not an instantaneous process.
Overall, Drive My Car lacks big emotions for such a painful subject that many of us have to experience at least once in our lives. It takes it a step further by also fusing the bereavement of the main characters with a healthy dose of forgiveness—which is perhaps the most powerful element of this film. I also appreciated how Drive My Car touched on the desire for people to find replacements for the loved ones they lost. Our desire to fill the hole left by those close to us is strong enough to make us eventually realize we have moved on.
An almost too thorough examination of grief, I give Drive My Car 4.0 stars out of 5.
