El mal no existe

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's followup to his masterful DRIVE MY CAR confronts the audience with its title but eases the viewer in with a long pastoral credit sequence. Then, an abrupt cut. Hamacuchi and cinematographer Yoshio Kitagawa do this a few times during the movie, as if jarring the viewer to pay attention.

Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) is a local jack of all trades in a small secluded Japanese mountain village. He lives his daughter, Hana (Ryo Nishikawa). Takumi and his circle of friends are happy with their quiet life, but their tranquility is threatened when a large firm decides to build a glamping (glamour camping) development in the area. The company is so large that when they hold a town meeting, they outsource the task to a pair of publicists (Ryuji Kosaka and Ayaka Shibutani) - further alienating the residents.

Writer-Director Hamaguchi isn't so much interested in the nuts and bolts aspects (although that meeting amusingly delves deeply into such details as sewerage), as setting up a parable about man and nature. Hamaguchi meticulously reveals how even one small change to the Eco system can upset the natural order and balance of life.

This isn't to say that Hamaguchi completely abandons the fine tuned dialogue that made DRIVE MY CAR so indelible. There's an extended sequence when the two corporate flacks have a lengthy and fascinating personal discussion as they drive out to try and offer Takumi a role in the glamping scheme. The one significant critique here is that the movie does strain a bit in trying to make its argument. Hamaguchi has said that he began the project as a half hour dialogue free short subject. The seams do show. Still, the filmmaking is top notch and the mostly amateur cast gives it a grounded reality no matter how high-minded the themes get. The finale is devastating and will stay with you long after the fade-out.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi has made some interesting movies in his career like Drive My Car, Happy Hour, and Asako I & II. While I haven't been wowed by his works, I appreciate many aspects of his style and approach.

Throughout, this movie has some wonderful colorful productions, camerawork, sound designs and atmosphere which helped add layers of the nature landscapes and environment. The narrative provides some interesting themes of nature, conflict of interest, humans and humans vs. Nature issues and explores some interesting aspects that are strong. The performances are all pretty good as well.

However, I am a bit underwhelmed with certain aspects as I found some of the themes feeling a little uneven to work Hamaguchi is wanting to express. Especially when it comes to the characters as while I did found some of the characters interesting, I didn't feel too emotionally connected with their personalities and purpose which made it a bit difficult to fully invest at times.

The soundtrack is wonderful and the dialogue is solid. The film does suffer some pacing issues and with an ending that leaves to many interpretations which may be frustrating for some. Overall, despite it's flaws, it's mediative and nature experience made this movie pretty good.

In a way it starts very cleverly with very slow nature scenes, illustrating how closely connected these people are to their natural surroundings, how they live off and in harmony with the land. They gather wood for heating, they collect spring water for drinking and cooking, they recharge by walking long distances and admiring the stunning beauty of the surroundings, they memorize the different trees, they look out for wild animals, they help each other.

And then Hamaguchi is the perfect director to create a scene showing a public gathering with public speakers and audience interaction. He did a lengthy scene in Happy Hour as well. He can create meaningful dialogue with stand-out lines. And quite a bit of tension. And we move to the theme of capitalism corrupting everything in its path, with no regard for the destruction it leaves behind. It's facts, figures, stats, consultant advice, bending the law and using it to your advantage. The waste of five people is still below the accepted limit of pollution. It's better than city water anyway.

Then we dig deeper into the struggles of the glamping company workers, who are caught between empathizing with the locals and working for a man who wants to make money. He is not exactly a ruthless money man, he is actually trying to run a profitable business and sees the bottom line. The advisor is the cynical one. But the director takes the advice to heart. The funds are received and partially spent, he can't back down.

And then there's the enigmatic Takumi, the quiet, but trusted lumberjack, or jack of all trades and the poor hapless Takahashi, the former talent agent who experiences a sudden urge to commune with nature.

Slow start that kind of makes sense in the grand scheme of things, but it still tests your patience, and indeed a very odd, somewhat upsetting and inexplicable ending. The middle part is sublime but the rest didn't quite gel well together.

I read the director's explanation, but it's still not coming through in my opinion.

It's funny to see people who no doubt gushed over "Perfect Days" dismiss "Evil Does Not Exist" as "boring" and "obscure". Like PD, it begins by following a man's quotidian routine: chopping wood, drawing water, identifying wild plants, teaching his daughter the names of trees. Perhaps the fact that he lives in a mountain town of no architectural or historical significance is what turns them off, but I found Takumi's activities as riveting as those of PD's public toilet cleaner.

As in "Drive My Car", we're exposed to a Japan that a few visitors--including many Japanese--have seen. As someone who was raised in Japan and returns regularly, I was thrilled to see a mountain location like the places I visited last year. I also found the plot--the incursion of a glamping company on the town's pristine land--riveting. What began as a fight-the-power, urban-rural plot turned out completely differently from the norm, a surprise I'm still thinking about days later.

The opening shot is mesmerising, disorientating, as Yoshio Kitagawa's camera pans under the tree tops to Eiko Ishibashi's haunting score. The start of Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "Evil Does Not Exist" reminds of Bela Tarr's "Satantango" (1994), with a slow-moving, natural, extended take. Not as extreme, but it sets the tone for what comes next.

Mizubiki village is a quiet mountain town a manageable drive from Tokyo. A minor holiday destination, investors want to set-up a glamping site, which naturally meets resistance from the locals. Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), a local odd-job man is cautious, but willing to meet the proposals halfway if they take the local environment into consideration.

Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) are the employees tasked with meeting the locals and convincing them of the project. Sympathetic to their hosts, they are people doing a job they don't necessarily believe in, and so are neither one thing or the other. Seeming to connect with Takumi, they feel a solution can be reached, but the reality is they are met with contempt from both sides.

Straightaway this enraptures you and you are immediately drawn into the small village and its humble ways. The brilliance of nature is emphasised throughout, and the opening moments show this perfectly. And as Takahashi and Mayuzumi try to deliver the initial presentation, key members of the community voice the importance of the environment on their health, community, work and business.

The last of these is the only focus the glamping project has in mind, thinking of the pretty landscape, and not the impact a modern resort will have on it. As Alex Kerr emphasises in his book "Hidden Japan," once you have been somewhere, you've already ruined it. The village elder (Taijiro Tamura) puts his point across succinctly: those living upstream must think of their impact on those downstream.

Often, I've found Hamaguchi's films, while good, can feel a little awkward. Characters and their interactions can feel wooden (perhaps due to his use of novice actors) and their motivations hard to grasp. "Drive My Car" (2021) was a step-up for him, and "Evil Does Not Exist" is by far his strongest in its script. It feels tighter, with arguments better put forward, in both the initial presentation and Takahashi and Mayuzumi's drive back to the village, where they share their career decisions. It is much more natural, though Takahashi's sudden desire to change careers may be a bit much for some.

Takumi's daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) is a key character, but perhaps from the standard use of a young girl to represent pure innocence. The true star of the film is the forest of its setting and the film's true lasting memory, working in unison with the soundtrack.

The title of the film is enigmatic, as is the atmosphere throughout. The isolation of the forest community, and their connection to nature, show an innocence. But clear in their desires, they show they will fight to keep what's theirs. Takahashi and Mayuzumi may be the face of the more sinister corporate body behind them, but also show themselves to be useless pawns, simply carrying out their job.

Is simple self-sufficiency more noble than misguidedly following orders from above for profits? The ending confuses this question, its incompleteness difficult to process. The real question is whether it is better to do bad to protect what you believe in, rather than trying to diplomatically do something you don't believe in out of expectation. Silence is complicit.

The forest is deep, and it's easy to lose yourself.

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