The artistry of Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s sophisticated drama, Evil Does Not Exist, signposts a bleak future for nature’s few standing reserves. Director Hamaguchi does this in ways that are as much haunting as perceptible. The subtle pace of the film’s rhythm left me thinking a long after leaving the cinema because it is a praise to humanity and its people who have had enough from the failures of capitalism. When everything looks doomed and sold for big private cash in the post-Covid era, Evil Does Not Exist underlines the tragedy of our society in which people’s intelligence is being undermined by private enterprises.
Takumi (played by Hitoshi Omika, Hamaguchi’s assistant director to his previous films) and his young daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) live in the serene Mizubiki village, an idyllic deer trail spot near Tokyo of circa 6000 inhabitants. Together with their neighbours they’ve created a simple community based on helping each other with their own labor. But their peaceful life is disrupted by the arrival of a Tokyo company that intends to buy nearby swathes of land and turn it into glamping – a glamorous camping site for the wealthy to escape from Tokyo’s busy life and concrete architecture. The proposed site’s septic tank, it turns out, threatens to poison the water supply in the village, and the company’s indifference to local concerns becomes evident during a town meeting with the project’s PR employees.
From the opening sequence, Hamaguchi’s gaze has a wondrous pace curried slowly by a current of air through the forest trees and up on the sky, providing a harmonious refuge from the complicating world we inhabit. Together with the film’s soundtrack by award winning Eiko Ishibashi, Hamaguchi’s earlier collaborator for his Academy Award winning Drive My Car, Evil Does Not Exist has beyond doubt a powerful effect and a leading sense of emotional processing. Indeed the film was originally shot as material to accompany a live musical performance for multi-instrumentalist Ishibashi. The result is a compelling visual and sound eco-thriller experience and a radical act of awareness through powerful storytelling. So far, for me, it’s Hamaguchi’s best.
Evil Does Not Exist is released in the UK and Ireland by Modern Films on 5 April 2024.
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