2 Texts + 2 Interviews

"I think it's easier for me to believe in the Devil than in truly evil people. I believe in evil as a concept and I believe in evil as an influence. I don't know, though, if it's a characteristic that's firmly rooted in people. I think there are extremely fucked-up people in the world who'll always do the wrong thing whenever they get a chance, but it's still hard for me to call them evil. But that's an insult to people who have suffered at the hands of those people."
--Andrew Bujalski

"I've been thinking about evil for some time. I've been looking at my three films and thinking, 'How can the grotesque and the evil be more a part of the film?' I've been thinking about the idea of evil and the idea of the grotesque ... Not every plot can tolerate evil, but of course it exists."
--Ramin Bahrani

• "What was Eric Rohmer?"
• "Morel vs. Besson"
• Interview with Andrew Bujalski
• Interview with Ramin Bahrani (Part 1, Part 2)

Hands Over the City

The hands of criminals, from Lang's While the City Sleeps and Limosin's Young Yakuza. Both are also the first shots of "crime" we see in the films. In the Lang film, it comes during the opening scene, the hand of the killer unlocking the door so he can return later to commit a murder; in the Limosin, it's the first image we see apart from the title card and credits. And here's the difference between the two directors and the two films, and also the difference between evil and criminality: Lang's evil is an inscrutable menace, while Limosin's crime is ordinary, banal, just a yakuza gambling on his off time. The irony is that the evil, more dangerous, comes at a moment of passion, while ordinary criminality is a permanent condition. Lang's killer lives amongst us, while Limosin's yakuzas aren't even allowed into convenience stores.