The Oscar for Best International Feature notwithstanding, the lackluster domestic performance of Drive My Car is notable in a country where homegrown movies have been outselling American blockbusters for the last 14 years.
The last time a Japanese entry won the Oscar for best international film 13 years ago, it was something of an upset, surprising the forecasters who had barely heard of Departures, Yojiro Takitaโs story about an accidental undertaker, before the ceremony.
Japanese cinema, after all, had long since faded from its mid-20th century glory, when critics and other filmmakers from around the globe celebrated directors like Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Yasujiro Ozu as giants of world cinema.
The winner this year, Drive My Car, Ryusuke Hamaguchiโs quiet, devastating meditation on grief, art., and human connection, was the overwhelming favorite in the international category and was also nominated for the best-adapted screenplay, best director, and best picture.
Hamaguchiโs Oscar win is something of a capstone to a slow-burn return of Japanese filmmakers to international acclaim. Three years ago, Hirokazu Kore-EDA's Shoplifters was also nominated in the international category at the Academy Awards after winning the Palme dโOr at the Cannes Film Festival, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa won the best director at the Venice Film Festival in 2020 for Wife of a Spy.
Yet in some ways, the international success of Drive My Carย derives from its transcendence of the constraints of an insular domestic film industry where most movies never make it off Japanโs shores.
Hamaguchiโs movie, based on short stories by Haruki Murakami, portrays โa Japan that is easy to accept and understand for foreigners,โ said Tamaki Tsuda, a television producer and former film critic in Tokyo. The content of the film is by definition international: The main character directs a theater production of Chekhovโs Uncle…