I loved this movie on so many levels. One of the things that I really enjoy about watching movies made in other countries is that there is such a different approach when it comes to how a story is told. For example, in this movie you aren't even necessarily sure what the main conflict is. It isn't assumed that the male lead and the female lead are going to be romantically linked. There isn't a music bed to tell us when something dramatic is happening. With this movie I just fell into a nice groove with it and let it take me away for three hours. I swear that the movie felt shorter than many of the ninety minute movies that I've seen recently.
Of course, this means that the movie isn't for everyone. The acting is fantastic but the pacing is.... deliberate? I laughed out loud when the opening credits started rolling forty minutes into the movie. It's been twenty four hours since I watched it and I am still pondering the central themes of the movie. I've seen some people say that they didn't like the movie because they believed the central theme to be grief. It may have been for some of the movie but clearly not for all of it. Also, the movie is beautiful to look at and it provides an excellent backdrop to ponder what is happening in the film.
Anyway, I would easily put this up with Licorice Pizza and Coda as the best movies of 2021.
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The way the movie elaborates human feelings is authentic...but is it ideal for a movie? The main character doesn't know how to feel about what happened untill the end of the movie.."I understand now" he says, talking about his life and the relationship with his wife. The young actor says he felt like empty before meeting Oto. The actors need to read the script endlessly before it starts flowing through them and still it is something that happens just for them, a short connection (the scene of the two actresses playing in the park), while the others (and ourselves as spectators) can only guess what happened. We are so used to see instant reactions to serious problems by characters who know who they are and how they're suppose to feel that they never doubt it because it is much more cinematic this way. This movie is about how hard is to recognize and even name what stirs within our hearts, and when we finally get it, it is often too late, just as for uncle Vania who wasted the best years of his life. We need time to get there, that's why the rhythm is so slow. Cinematic? Not really. Still so real.
I really don’t know what to say about this film. I know that it is special and unique but I find it hard to put my finger on it. Okay, first, this is not a movie for everyone. It is a very slow burn for almost 3 hours. It is emotionally cool with radiant bursts of emotion as it builds. It is in Japanese with occasional Korean, Mandarin, Korean Sign Language English and it is subtitled. It is not an emotional rollercoaster although it will put you in touch with a lot of your deepest emotions: grief, loss, betrayal, hate, love, beauty, joy, redemption, and hope, to name a few (did I mention it is about 3 hours long?). It is all about articulating life and it uses text as the magic that unlocks the hidden places of the human experience. The most obvious text is from Anton Chekhov‘s UNCLE VANYA which cleverly inserts selective dialogue throughout the film that informs the characters in their struggle to make life make sense. The power of storytelling, in many forms and languages, is definitely a theme, no better illustrated by the fact that the opening credits roll at 40:19 into the movie making everything that just happened, prologue to the film. This is a film for thinkers, creatives and those who get great reward from mining the depths of words and experiences to enrich their mind and inform their lives. This film is gathering awards like a tumbleweed and is a critical success, most giving it instant 10s out of 10. I give this film an 8 (thought provoking with beautiful moments) out of 10. [Drama]
The film is about loss, more specifically about being stopped at some point in someone's life. The 4 main characters: the wife, the protagonist, the actor and the driver, are all in a period of their life in which they cannot chance or move forward from a loss they have suffered. It is interesting to analyze these characters through a theme that unites them: death.
The protagonist blames himself for killing his wife, when his only real fault was that of waiting, lying, not talking to the woman he loves. The two find themselves in crisis after the death of their daughter and have probably not been able to heal from this, especially the protagonist who never tried to heal and deal with loss with his wife, never listened to her and despite the marriage fell apart and she was cheating on him. The two still love each other so they both never took a step because they were afraid of losing each other. This is until the wife decides to talk to the protagonist, but they will never be able to clarify or explain because he decides to prolong the moment as long as possible without doing anything. the death of his wife actually symbolizes the end of the relationship which has also ended Because he has never been able to go on, as he does now after the death of his wife, he has never been able to listen to her Because he is too hurt by the cheating. such a great pain has erased everything he had built up in years with marriage and now the same pain is continuing to kill his own life, paralyzed in the past, in search of an answer that will never come: and this is were the actor helps him: you can never really know someone, the only way to be able to really look at the other is to look inside yourself and be honest with yourself. The protagonist is finally able to shift the focus of his life on him, to see his own faults and his condition, a participant in this is the driver, who precisely guides him along this path. like the name of the film, he lets her drive his own life, the car, Orthe last material memory of his wife, that represents the man's entire life because he is still stuck at that moment. when he manages to turn the pages and get out of the car, a new life and healing process will begin for him.
The driver also blames herself for the death of her mother, and in this case she does nothing too, but she is aware of it, probably the biggest difference with the protagonist: she knows that she is going to kill both her mother and her best friend, she knows and does nothing, while the other ignores and pretends that nothing happens. the response to the mother's abuses is to let her die and similarly to the protagonist, after having suffered such great pain, one must also abandon the sweet part and the love that was in that pain, in this case: the other personality of the mother, a 8-year-old girl who is claimed to try to face the difficulties of life, treating everything with the same recklessness and innocence that children have. even the driver in the end lets go of death and the guilt of it that had been gripping her for years now, her scar was always there to make herself accountable to the fact, to remember, but in the future the scar is no longer there because the driver makes peace with herself.
Perhaps the most interesting character: the actor or the lover. probably apathetic, he can only feel something in wife's show, and because of this he falls in love with her and starts a relationship with her. he kills a man, this time he is totally aware of what he is doing, and unlike the other two cases he is actively participating in the murder. he knows what he is doing and does not ignore it, he takes his responsibilities: this is the fulcrum of the speech he makes in the car with the protagonist: it is useless to ignore what one is, or the cruel actions towards the world that one does, because they have already been done, and, if the only way to know each other and appreciate what others can give us is by knowing ourselves, if we can only love others when we love ourselves, then we might as well accept ourselves for who we really are, without hiding even in the face of our own evil.
Actor is the opposite of the protagonist: one is active, the other passive towards life; one is irrational and cannot control himself, the other is cautious and silent, like this film.
Review by Snowy_CapHaddockBlockedParentSpoilers2022-01-16T04:14:20Z
What an incredible, incredible movie.
I'll need some time to properly digest it and I think it deserves at least a 2nd vision to notice other details, words, glances and gestures because so much is said without using spoken words.
It is a stunning journey through grief and growth, with a very peculiar (for us Westerners at least, I feel) pace: slow, for sure, but also contemplative. It felt like being able to embark on the journey with the characters, thanks to their willingness to listen; I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, but in a U.S. movie I would have expected rage, emotions bursting, maybe crying - which for me if not done properly, disrupt the rhythm of the tale and sort of wake you up from your identifying with the people on screen. Here I felt characters internalized, reflected on the moments that shaked their core, allowing us to reflect with them.
Furthermore, the fact that little actually happens, allows to take the proper time to hear the characters, let them explain themselves slowly and not always with words - which I found a superb way to depict a human in a multifaceted way.
There are at least a couple of scenes I found remarkable: the dinner, the 3 people journey in the car and the (almost) final scene where sign language conveys emotion and the meaning of the moment in a better way than any speech.