matt qt’s review published on Letterboxd:
I struggled immensely with Drive My Car. My rating, although not a negative one, is clearly off of the consensus if you look at the ratings graph. I obviously didn’t hate Drive My Car, but I can’t remember being this mind-numbingly bored during a film in a long time. The subject matter just didn’t interest me in any way, and the whole film really revolved around this uninteresting theater production that I couldn’t latch onto. I thought that there were a lot of filler scenes relating to this play being directed by our main character that didn’t work to further any relationships, which is really what the film is about. This film really hits its groove in the last hour when every relationship (mainly between Kafuku and his driver) has had enough time to develop. That is why I can’t criticize the length of this movie, even though I found most of it to be a bore. Drive My Car is a slow burn in its truest sense. Is the burn necessarily worth all of the slow? I think I’m still figuring that out. If this sounds like your kind of thing, you will probably love it.
