Happy Hour · reception & legacy
2015 · Ryusuke Hamaguchi
How Happy Hour has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It premiered at Locarno in 2015 as a 317-minute curio from a barely-known Japanese director and screened mostly to festival diehards; after Drive My Car swept the world in 2021, cinephiles went back and crowned Happy Hour the secret masterpiece of Hamaguchi's filmography.
What's debated
The eternal debate: is the five-hour-plus runtime essential or indulgent — with converts insisting it 'flies by' and that it's actually better than Drive My Car.
Its footprint
It's become the go-to exhibit in the 'long films that earn every minute' conversation — the movie people dare each other to start, then evangelize about once they've finished.
Where it stands
A canon climber and Letterboxd favourite — the deep cut that signals you've gone beyond Drive My Car into full Hamaguchi devotion.
Named by the director
Influences Ryusuke Hamaguchi has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- John Cassavetes — Hamaguchi, who wrote his graduate thesis on Cassavetes, has cited him as the key influence on Happy Hour's workshop-based, improvisation-rooted approach to performance.