Drive My Car director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi can't drive, but he can win an Oscar

EW's countdown to the 2022 Oscars has everything you're looking for, from our expert predictions and in-depth Awardist interviews with this year's nominees to nostalgia and our takes on the movies and actors we wish had gotten more Oscars love. You can check it all out at The Awardist.

Maybe it's not so hard to explain the phenomenon of Drive My Car, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's nuanced drama about loss, isolation, and the universal urge to reconnect, released during a time when such emotions were more globally felt than usual. The movie of the moment, it sits at a historic juncture: both an immensely worthy Oscar contender (and potential upsetter), as well as a symbol of an Academy in flux. Hamaguchi, 43, both serious and playful, was happy to touch on some of the finer points of his work.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Your film is partly about the reflective moments that happen to us when we're behind the wheel. Do you like driving?

RYÛSUKE HAMAGUCHI: I actually am not able to drive.

Okay, what? Your movie is called Drive My Car.

[Laughs] I do possess a license. But in Japan, we have a saying, we call it a "paper driver." Because we're just a driver on paper — we don't actually drive. I do enjoy riding in cars with other people and talking with them.

Why don't you drive?

To tell you the truth, I did get a license when I was in my twenties, and I drove about three times, but all three times I had some sort of minor accident. I didn't think I was really suited for driving.

I'm getting a real scoop here. So what was it about writer Haruki Murakami's short story — especially his idea of being mobile — that made you say, "That's my film"?

Conversations taking place in a car, it's a significant aspect of Murakami, but I also feel it in the films of [Abbas] Kiarostami, the Iranian filmmaker. You're in the process of going somewhere. And I think your mind goes to a bit of a different place when you're communicating this way.

Meanwhile, Murakami's car in the short story is yellow and a convertible. Why did you change that?

We talked about the importance of having conversations in cars. I thought this would be very difficult with a convertible because of wind noise. So I went to a repair shop to look at different cars. Someone rolled up in a car, and it was the red Saab 900. And it really stood out from the scenery. And I thought, Wow, that's a cool car. I wanted something that would pop, and red seemed to be the color for that. It was a fortuitous decision, but that's how I came to it.

And Murakami was cool with that? With the shift to red?

To be honest, he actually had no feedback regarding the script or the production. So I didn't hear anything about the color change. It wasn't until I saw the interview in the New York Times with Murakami, where he remarked that he had a bit of concern, but that he gradually got used to it. So I figured that he was okay with it.

Okay, got it. Enough car talk. One of the things Drive My Car is about is communication. We watch your actors rehearsing a production of Uncle Vanya, repeating their lines over and over without inflection. Is that the way you do it? And why was that important to put in a film?

This actually is a method I do employ, a really essential one for me as a director. In terms of why it's important, it's a way to get rid of discomfort at the physical level. If time after time, they're doing these line readings without emotions, eventually it's going to come out of them more naturally, and their voices will also start to change. And at the point that their own voices are coming out, I feel like: Okay, I can shoot. There's no guarantee.

In a larger sense, you've gambled by making a film that's as long as Drive My Car, and this is something you've done on several projects. But I've seen a lot of three-hour movies that don't repay the risk. What are the advantages of having an audience calibrate to the durations you like to operate at?

I think that this was the amount of time that was needed to get to a point of satisfaction with the characters. I didn't set out to make a long movie per se. It just came out to be this length. This is actually the cut-down version of what we had that was longer. And I thought that this was probably the shortest that it could be in order to be a fleshed-out film. I thought if it was cut more, it might actually feel longer in a way.

Grief is something that takes time, both to evoke and to confront. We often talk about "processing" grief but your film suggests it's something we learn to live with. What's the significance of setting the film in Hiroshima?

We were going to set it in Busan, in Korea, originally. But because of coronavirus, we were not able to do that. So we were looking for a domestic city in Japan. This is where the atomic bomb was dropped. The city was destroyed, and they reconstructed from zero, starting from nothing, with the vision of peace. So that's why we picked that city.

How are you handling the Oscar crush? Is it anything you anticipated?

Not at all. The efforts that were made by critics in regard to this film, especially here in the States — they really cooperated in pushing this film. And from there, it was a snowball effect. Despite the fact that it was Haruki Murakami source material, I really didn't anticipate that it would go this far. I can only say that I'm extremely appreciative.

Related content:

• Drive My Car wins Best Picture, three other major prizes at National Society of Film Critics awards
• The most shocking snubs and surprises of the 2022 Oscar nominations
• How to watch the 2022 Oscar nominees