Evil Does Not Exist (2023)

Dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Screened at the 31st Annual Hamptons International Film Festival

In Japanese writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s first film since his most acclaimed effort to date with 2021’s Drive My Car, he offers up a film that feels meditative in its approach to each scene but is anything but relaxed.

The first several minutes of Evil Does Not Exist are made of an unbroken, slow-moving tracking shot looking up at trees in the forest we soon get to learn more about. To some, this opening may come off as tedious, but it’s Hamaguchi easing the audience in by letting us enjoy the calm before the storm. The story is centered on the idea of the natural world being corrupted by outsiders, affecting both the community and the earth itself. Tokyo company Playmode sends representatives Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) to a small village whose people have been living lives on their own simple terms. Among those who see right through the pair’s ignorance during their presentation proposing a glamping (glamorous camping) site in the village is the “local odd-job man,” Takumi (Hitoshi Omika). Although the audience is as quick as the residents to notice the silliness in their presentation, naturally sympathizing with the community over the corporate pair more focused on profit and attracting tourists than protecting the village’s natural resources, these “invaders” end up taking a surprising turn from how we first see them.

Late-30s Takahashi and the younger Mayuzumi are introduced to us behind a desk overflowing with wires, giving the aforementioned presentation to the group of locals who are uninterested in the proposal, but vocal in their opposition. They later return to their office in the middle of a bustling city — the complete antithesis of the quiet, contained village we’ve already grown cozy in — and the modern contrast to the primitive wood-splitting scenes we’re shown earlier is obvious to a purposefully comedic extent. There are two large speakers on either side of the television that Takahashi and Mayuzumi are using to video-chat with their superior in one of the movie’s funniest scenes, satirizing out-of-touch enterprisers, and the office has even more cables growing like weeds. With this focus on industrialization, technology and modernization as a whole comes a routine between Takumi and the urbanites that’s filled with dry humor, and is enjoyable and eye-opening for both us and the two outsiders.

The film pivots from the conflict between the village locals and the Playmode employees to a look at how Takahashi and Mayuzumi are lost in life — loneliness for the former and lack of a career path for the latter. It puts on display the irony of them trying to “improve” others’ lives, meanwhile, they haven’t figured out their own yet. It’s a light commentary that follows the two as we see them try to genuinely assimilate themselves. Takumi begins to tolerate them, but it doesn’t take long for that light to die out. Although Takahashi’s fascination with becoming an outdoorsman is often played for laughs, the increasingly dramatic course of events leading up to the film’s final minutes shows how not only is intervention rarely welcomed by those already satisfied with their way of life, but how the disrupters who are more helpless than those they’re offering aid to can create more problems than solutions. This interruption of a content world plays out in different ways throughout the film. On a visual level, there are times when lingering static shots are jarringly interrupted by shaky car footage, making you feel uncomfortable as if you’re driving forward while only looking through the rearview mirror.

What’s especially impressive on Hamaguchi’s part is that even though it’s a movie that’s blatantly modern and even mentions the recent pandemic, its ever-relevant message helps avoid it feeling like a movie that will age quickly. Hamaguchi’s mix of humor and the deeply serious themes he presents works wonders in telling a story of protection, finding purpose and fending for oneself when faced with an outside force. The latter works two-fold: the village rejects the laughable luxury camping experience that strips away the very nature of camping, and Takumi’s daughter stumbles into a dangerous encounter with a pair of deer in the climax. In both cases, we see a disruption of a natural order. Whereas the opening shot may have felt like it’d never stop, when it comes back at the end in more dim lighting, reflecting the grim course of events, it feels like a much-needed reliever.

10/7/23