<em>Drive My Car</em> Pushes the Limit of Language
In recent years, the subject of language has been prominent on American movie-award stages. In 2020, Lee Isaac Chung’s gorgeous family drama Minari was controversially nominated for best foreign-language film at the Golden Globes despite being in both English and Korean and dealing with the very American experiences of isolation and immigration. A year earlier, after winning in the same category for Parasite, the South Korean director Bong Joon Ho had memorably urged viewers to “overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles.” Both Minari and Parasite were nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and the latter became the first non-English-language film to win the top prize.
Both of these films also underscored how insufficient language is as a (which is now streaming on HBO Max), directly addresses the fluidity of language in a contemporary world. Based on a Haruki Murakami short story of the same name, is a profound movie preoccupied with the things that can be communicated among people who do not share a common tongue.
