Episode 196: Drive My Car (2021) [New Criterion Episode]

This is a more modern Japanese film called Drive My Car we're looking at today, directed by Raisuke Hamaguchi.

And I've not seen any of his films before, but a couple of his movies have been, like, I put them on the wish list a while ago because they kept popping up in the recommendations, which was Wheel of Fortune and Fancy, and Evil Does Not Exist are the two that keep getting recommended to me, and seem to be fairly highly rated as well on IMDb.

But I hadn't seen these movies before, though, so I didn't really know what to expect, other than this had a good bit of critical acclaim.

It's obviously in the Criterion Collection, since that's the whole point of the season.

But beyond that, I didn't know a whole lot other than it was on sale, like, eight months ago, and I bought it.

And I'm like, that's going to go on a season.

And that's,

like, 90% of collector's cut.

That's how

it happens.

Well, the ones I've not seen before, that tends to be how they happen.

So that is why we're doing this one today.

But I did want to watch it.

I was actively interested in checking it out.

So here we are.

We're going to talk about it.

I mean, I assume you didn't know anything about it before I told you about it, but did you... look at

anything before you watch the movie no no no i i look it's i know occasionally there's a movie that's like i will criticize or not so much criticize but i'll i'll make known that i feel like it does work better knowing about going in but i'm not worth risking that i'm not worth risking the ones where it is truly a genuine delight to not know sure and i i'd rather go in blind either way

That is completely fair.

So, yeah, I mean, the premise for this, I'm not even sure exactly how much to give here because this is a three hour long movie.

And one thing I will say is, and I checked the time because I knew it was going to be an interesting number, is when the opening titles of this film start, they start at the 40 minute mark of this movie.

There is a 40 minute effectively prologue before the actual movie starts.

And it's not really true, right? It's more than just a prologue.

There's a lot of depth there.

It just...