Drive My Car was voted Best Picture by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (of which I am a member).

Interview with the Director

Murakami’s short story 

It started with one of my producers asking me if I wanted to make a movie from one of Murakami’s short stories. He was known for not wanting features from his longer works, but there had been previous adaptations of his short stories. Burning was one of them, and another Japanese film, Hanalei Bay.

When my producer said this, I suggested Drive My Car, as I had read it about eight years ago and found some resonance with motifs that I had dealt with in my films: conversations in cars, performances.

I knew that I would have to expand things, because there wasn’t enough material to fill a two-hour film. And the original ends in the middle, so I also needed to work on the ending.

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Expand story into film?

I was really interested in the relationship between the two characters. But I knew that I would have to expand things, because there wasn’t enough material to fill a two-hour film. And the original ends sort in the middle, so I also needed to work on the ending. Of much importance to me was presenting the unique worldview that Hayao Murakami has in his work.

Original story has flashbacks

I just felt that the flashback was a technique that I couldn’t use well. That was really the main reason. Flashbacks are basically used to explain what has happened, meaning that you’re looking from a future point in time and you’re going back. I don’t know if that’s really the richest way to use time, to use it for explanatory purposes. As a result, I created this movie so that the flashbacks would be created by the viewers themselves.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi photographed by Kris Dewitte

Credits inserted at 40 minutes into the film

That idea was always in the script. I wanted to give the audience a little bit of a breather between the initial section and what came next. If I didn’t do that, I thought the burden on the viewers would be too heavy.

Setting confined to car space?

The moving car is a limited space — but because it’s moving, that actually allows for the expansion of space. If a scene were to be set in a room, there’s a limit to how much the space can expand. But if you’re in a moving vehicle, as opposed to being closed off, it’s actually a space that can be expanded.

However, for the actors, it does place a burden for them to maintain their focus in the closed-off space. I try to do the preparation for these scenes as quickly as possible, and to convey to the actors the importance of the scene before we go into this limited space.

COVID’s impact on the shoot?

We were in the middle of shooting and had to stop. We had already shot the 40-minute section set in Tokyo. The rest was supposed to be shot in Busan in Korea, but because of COVID we were not able to use this overseas location. So we had to transition to Hiroshima, to a domestic location.

Murakami’s reaction to the film?

The writer saw the and it seems like he was a fan of it. He did not come to the premiere, but I heard that he watched it at his local theater, and I heard that he enjoyed it. He said he was not sure which portions he had written, which came from his original work, and which hadn’t.