It’s Popzara’s Movie Time! Podcast!, where our own movie nerds Ethan Brehm and Nate Evans take you on an unscripted journey yakking and chatting about some of their favorite movie moments and cinematic scenes, from past and present, presented without snark and snobbery for your listening pleasure.
On this esoteric episode the guys discuss Drive My Car, the multilingual masterpiece from writer/director Ryusuke Hamaguchi that’s sorta-kinda based on Haruki Murakami’s short story of the same name. A meditation about love and loss centered around an ambitious adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, what the film lacks in fidelity to the original text is more than made up for in reverence to what makes Murakami intrinsically Murakami.
Listen as Ethan and Nate examine one of 2021’s best films, a nearly 3-hour epic taking viewers on a journey spanning love, loss, and language as only the best cinema can. Does Drive My Car prove it’s possible to translate Murakami from the page to the screen? Learn how Chekhov’s Gun literary foreshadowing becomes literal, favorable comparisons to 2021’s other cinematic masterpiece, Pig (and less so with Disney’s high profile MCU Eternals), and how Hamaguchi’s film could fare in the upcoming awards season maelstrom.