Evil Does Not Exist

Renowned Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi delivers his most enigmatic film yet with Evil Does Not Exist, a masterful study of corporate greed presented in a rural Japanese village. Immaculately shot and directed as always, and every bit as powerful as Hamaguchi’s 2021 masterpiece Drive My Car, this quietly measured drama is much shorter than previous Hamaguchi films. This one clocks in at a lean 104 minutes and its partly minimalistic and opaque, Hamaguchi’s film eventually becomes verbalized in quite a few stretches, proving that he has a pitch-perfect eye as a visualist and a confident ear and pen for character dialogue as well. The film’s setting is a rural village outside of Tokyo, which serves as a backdrop for the subtext that sets its themes about corporatism and greed.

Stylistically, the entirety of the film has the tone and execution of the final hour of Drive My Car, in which the setting is a wintry rural town in Hokkaido. Like Drive My Car, the wintry setting served as a contemplative backdrop for shared grief. In Evil Does Not Exist, the rural setting represents a scarce steward of the natural world that is currently uncorrupted by rural development, tourism, and capitalism. It’s a small community where the local ecosystem is untouched by any type of contamination. The clean water, creeks, and streams are pristine. It’s a village setting that so unknown to suburbanites and metropolitans that they would never have motivation to go. That’s until land developers begin to survey the land after they are given limited-time government subsidies from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Courtesy Janus Films

While the set-up sounds like a heavy-handed movie about capitalism running the environment, the film becomes a lot wiser in its themes and execution. However, as the film unravels, it begins to unfold like a parable, almost like a folk tale with Shakespearian sensibilities. The film’s lead is played by acting newcomer Hitoshi Omika, who actually used to be an AD on Hamaguchi’s previous films. In the film, he plays Takumi, a widowed father who raises his young daughter Hana in the village. In the distance, we hear gunfire and its hot spot for deer hunters, as the vicinity is populated with various deer and buck with a deer trail and vast field. Takumi makes his living by being a jack-of-all-trades guy. He is able to support himself and his daughter by selling chopped wood, and he gathers fresh water in gallon containers for the local wet noodle restaurants. His duties often go over schedule, which leads to him getting sidetracked from picking Hana up from school, who ends up just walking home from school most of the time.

The town’s daily routines are put into place, of course, once a Tokyo company hires a PR company to hold a town meeting with the villagers to inform them that they will be building a “glamping” site for wealthy people from the city. The town meeting ends up becoming more of a town hall meeting once the residents learn that the company plans to build a septic tank that will certainly contaminate the water stream. It’s certainly a rushed development planned and pushed by a company so they can qualify for post-COVID subsidies. Ironically, the people brought in to persuade the town on the deal aren’t people directly linked with the company.

The company brings in hired talking heads Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) from a talent agency, believing their charm, forced enthusiasm, and hollow professionalism will somehow convince the naive townsfolk. They easily end up getting out-debated and outmatched in the debate. The interaction goes on for about 15-20 minutes, and who would have thought discussions on septic tanks and the local water supply would feel so engaging? Yet Hamaguchi’s dialogue and performances from the actors really draw you in with how expertly staged the exchange is.

Courtesy Janus Films

The brilliance of the narrative is how intricate the characterizations become. Takahashi and Mayuzumi both walk into the town, believing they are steps ahead of the town, only to walk out feeling defeated. They are instantly annihilated by the townspeople; some are more diplomatic, while others are more hard-lined and instantly reject the proposal. Takumi is the voice of reason in the room, along with the local wet noodle restaurant owner. Takumi informs them that the septic will create pollution. He’s not entirely opposed to tourism being brought into the community, but safety needs to be considered.

Takahashi and Mayuzumi end up approaching Takumi after the meeting; they collect his information, and they return the grievances of the town to the CEO of the company. The CEO informs them they should offer him a caretaker position for the project. Both Takashi and Mayuzumi seem guilty of their pitch, and there is an astonishing Kiarostami-inspired dialogue scene of the PRs showing their vulnerabilities that elevates them out of being one-dimensional villainous characters. Their character growth only evolves as the film progresses, up until the riveting third act, where the themes become even more competitive, in which Takumi admits that the town’s roots were also based on government laws that allowed farming development in the region after the war, which examines how humankind and nature co-exist while self-destructing each other to some degree.

Courtesy Janus Films

Hamaguchi bounces between the hallucinatory and the accessible in this film, and it’s balanced out quite well. The camera work by Yoshio Kitagawa offers many glorious images and long stretches of glorious camera movements. As usual with Hamaguchi, the music makes a dramatic impact with Eiko Ishibashi’s brilliant score being utilized with great effect. Hitoshi Omika, as Takumi, is effective; he brings a mystery to his isolated life. He displays a kind of tormented individual who is holding back a lot of anger and machismo. He’s a flawed but caring father who deeply cares for his daughter, but he also has issues balancing out his time, which allows him to be a compelling protagonist that holds various complexities.

Which leads to a brilliant finale that is both ambiguous and shattering. The chaos of life spirals out of control in the unnerving third act, and built-in tensions inevitably unwind. Thematically and visually, there are shades of Akira Kurosawa in this film, especially Dersu Uzala, which examines the decay of nature, humankind, and the euphony that connects them. Until the climax, which includes an epilogue involving nature and trees. The themes are metaphorically and deliberately subjective—at times perplexing—with imagery thematically connecting themes of what’s truly evil isn’t in humans, but in systems such as capitalism that leads to consumption, commerce, and greed. Illuminating and artful, Evil Does Not Exist examines how nature is always vulnerable and in danger due to these systems. With that, Evil Does Exist is a deeply metaphysical and haunting experience that just happens to be the best film so far of 2024.

EVIL DOES NOT EXIST opens in limited theaters on Friday, May 3rd. There is an exclusive engagement at the Detroit Film Theater on Friday, May 24th until Sunday May 26th. For tickets and showtimes Evil Does Not Exist | Detroit Institute of Arts Museum (dia.org)

It will expand in Metro Detroit on Friday, May 31st.