Drive My Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021)
It's that time of the year when every blaggard sitting in front of a computer starts to compile their best of lists (including yours very soon), and sifting through Sight And Sound's Best Films of 2021 list of entries compiled by some of today's most pretentious film critics really does highlight the cultural barrier between the chin-strokers and the great unwashed.
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| "I've been driving in my car, it don't look much but I've been far I drive up to Muswell Hill, I've even been to Selsey Bill" |
Having endured a laborious three-hour sit through of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car, I'm baffled how this film even made it on any critic's list, let alone a whole flock of them. Hamaguchi taps into themes pertaining to guilt and regret (something I definitely felt while watching this, might I add ) amidst the backdrop of a pre-production of Uncle Vanya, by the film's playwrite/actor protagonist. Performances are generally solid and the photography is capable enough, but it's the pacing that kills it for me; to the point where every pregnant pause takes the piss and every scene achingly outstays its welcome on the screen. If I were to hazard a guess, shaving off around forty-five to sixty minutes in the editing room, would have helped the film in a major way, as it stands, it annoyed the hell out of me.
Sure your typical, condescending pseudo-intellectuals are fawning all over it, but this is just another case of the emperor's new clothes to me. An agonising endurance test and the latest example of my disconnect with today's film critics. One for the Oscar chasers.
EDIT: Props to the dapper dressed gent, Kim Newman for at least keepin' it real.
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