How to Watch the Oscar-Winning Film Drive My Car

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Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car has already made history: the Haruki Murakami adaptation is the first Japanese film ever to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Drive My Car was up for four honors at the 2022 Oscars, including that top prize: Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature Film, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Drive My Car, too, became the first Japanese film nominated in a screenplay category at the Oscars.

When Drive My Car won Best International Film, it became only the second Japanese film to hold the honor. The first was Yōjirō Takita's Departures in 2008. During his acceptance speech, Hamaguchi thanked the Academy and shouted out his cast, including actor Hidetoshi Nishijima and actress Toko Miura. Despite multiple attempts to play him off, Hamaguchi got through his whole speech.

Hamaguchi became the first Japanese director to be nominated since 1986, when Akira Kurosawa received a nod for Ran, a Japanese epic adapted from William Shakespeare's King Lear, and only the third Japanese director nominated in Oscar history. A Japanese director has never won the Best Director prize.

"I never expected [the nominations]," Hamaguchi told CNN. "I think the fact that non-English language films can be nominated in this way really confirms to me that things are changing and that we're part of that change."

Hamaguchi co-wrote the screenplay with Takamasa Oe, and Drive My Car is adapted from the 2014 short story of the same name by bestselling Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Found in Murakami's short story collection Men Without Women, the story follows renowned stage actor and director, Yūsuke Kafukuwho (Hidetoshi Nishijima), who is set to direct a production of Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There, he meets Misaki Watari (Toko Miura), a taciturn young woman assigned to chauffeur him in his beloved red Saab 900.

As the premiere of his show approaches, tensions mount amongst the cast and crew and Yusuke is forced to confront painful truths about his past, including mysteries surrounding his late wife. The three-hour film focuses on themes of love, grief, and art.

How to watch Drive My Car:

The film is available to stream on HBOMax.

Sign up for HBO Max here

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