After the narrative brilliance and moral complexity of Drive My Car, winner of the Academy Award for best international feature film in 2022, auteur Ryusuke Hamaguchi takes a step back to admire the landscape of his native Japan in an engimatic story about environmental conservation and humankind’s relationship to nature.
Evil Does Not Exist (Aku wa Sonzai Shinai) feels something like an interlude between big films and may disappoint or puzzle fans of his previous work with its deliberate camerawork, slow pace and ordinary characters who live close to the land in a forested area close to Tokyo. What is exceptional is that the last five minutes change everything, revealing the subtle meaning Hamaguchi has been circling around up to then, and this final scene is guaranteed to furnish lively dinner conversation as viewers try to puzzle out its ambiguities. Not to spoil the surprise, but like Drive My Car, the writer-director seems happy to let individual film-goers finish the story for themselves.
Evil was originally conceived as a silent work to accompany Gift, a live score performance composed by Eiko Ishibashi, then subsequently was rolled out as a narrative film in its own right. Its close symbiosis with the music, however, is very evident from the opening tracking shot moving steadily through a forest of fir trees, with the camera pointed at the sky and treetops. Extended well beyond expectations, this shot forces viewers into a contemplative mode, making them slow down and consider nature without any guiding context.
Takumi (a natural, low-key performance by a non-pro actor, Hitoshi Omika) is an odd jobs man who lives with his 8-year-old daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) in the forest. He leaves her at a day care center while he works and often becomes so absorbed in physical tasks like chopping wood or collecting spring water from a stream that he forgets to pick her up. Hana is used to his lateness and walks home by herself, crossing through empty fields even after a wise elder in the village warns her not to. So a red flag goes up early.
The first part of the film revolves around a Tokyo company determined to build a “glamping” facility in the area. Just knowing that the term is a portmanteau word made from glamour and camping is enough to raise several more red flags. And indeed, when the project is summarily explained to village residents in a town hall meeting, the two company reps, Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani), are unprepared for the locals’ firm pushback, especially on the placement of a septic tank that will pollute the ground water supply.
Surprisingly, these two rather standard corporate villains, with their cheery video of luxury tents offering city dwellers an “escape to nature” in the pristine forest where deer roam, return in the second half of the film as flawed human beings who don’t like their job. Takahashi goes so far as to suggest he may quit and move to the village, where Takumi can instruct him on the ways of nature.
But does the woodcutter himself really understand the impersonal majesty of the natural world, where a dead fawn has been reduced to a skeleton picked over by other animals, whose bones will soon return to dust? Showing his daughter the carcass, Takumi (no detail escapes him) notes that the fawn was wounded, presumably by hunters whose shots occasionally echo through the valley; it did not die quickly. Yet the film suggests that he himself underestimates the dangers in the wild, and is too busy teaching Hana the names of different trees to warn her about risks posed by indifferent nature.
Although Eiko Ishibashi’s complex modern score is the most up-front of the tech credits, boldly contrasting with the everyday imagery and opening up new depths in the outdoor scenes, Yoshio Kitagawa’s cinematography is a constant counterpoint in capturing a snowy watering hole for deer or a stubbly field that seems to recede into the distance, swallowing up a man and child.
Director, screenplay: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Cast: Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani, Hazuki Kikuchi, Hiroyuki Miura
Producer: Satoshi Takata
Cinematography: Yoshio Kitagawa
Editing: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Azusa Yamazaki
Production design: Masato Nunobe
Music: Eiko Ishibashi
Sound: Izumi Matsuno
Production company: NEOPA
World Sales: M-Appeal
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
In Japanese
106 minutes
