https://thecineblog.com/tags/japan/ Recent content in Japan on The CineBlog Hugo en-US Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:00:10 -0500 https://thecineblog.com/stories/drive-my-car/ Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://thecineblog.com/stories/drive-my-car/ <p>Actors are liars. They come to set armed with premeditated tears, rehearsed vocal inflections, and a desperate need to show you how much they are feeling. It is the director’s job to strip away this artifice and expose the terrifying truth beneath. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s <em>Drive My Car</em> is a devastating masterpiece precisely because he refused to let his actors act.</p> <h2 id="directing-the-performance-the-emotionless-read">Directing the Performance: The Emotionless Read</h2> <p>To achieve the profound emotional resonance of the film, Hamaguchi employed an extreme, almost sadistic rehearsal technique. He forced his cast to endure extensive, repetitive table reads of the script—and of Chekhov’s <em>Uncle Vanya</em>—completely stripped of emotion.</p>