«Evil Does Not Exist» - Movie Review by Kinoafisha

Winter forest. Above, there is only a white sky and the crowns of leafless trees. The camera slowly slides forward. The delicate string score by composer Eiko Ishibashi sounds. Ryusuke Hamaguchi began collaborating with her on the film "Get behind the Wheel of My Car", which won him the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. And it was thanks to Ishibashi's music that the director decided to turn the new project — an initial 30-minute short film — into a full-length film with dialogues, titled "Evil does not Exist." In September 2023, the film was shown at the Venice Film Festival, where it received the Grand Prix of the jury.

The film takes place in a small Japanese village, where the unsmiling Takumi lives in a secluded forest house with his little daughter Hana. Takumi earns extra money from the neighbors and brings water for the local noodle shop. Most of the time, father and daughter contemplate nature, looking at wild wasabi, mountain springs and the skeleton of a dead deer (the animal is hunted here by unknown troublemakers). Takumi often forgets to pick up Hana from school, but her teacher hardly worries: in this idyllic world, she will be fine. However, the measured existence is disrupted when a couple from a talent agency arrives in the village. They represent the interests of a company that started the construction of a glamping for urban tourists to cover the remnants of subsidies for the pandemic.

From the very first frames, slow cinema plunges into a meditative state and brings the true protagonist of this story, nature, to the center of the narrative. One by one, the villagers speak out against the unfinished development plan, protecting their untouched land and resources. And suddenly each of them becomes a mouthpiece, a real speaker with critical thinking in their common battle for the purity of water from the stream. However, the concern of local residents about the ecosystem is also partly imaginary. Takumi is chopping firewood for most of the movie. Thus, the director seems to want to show that man harms nature by the very fact of his existence in it. People are an evil that very much exists. People shoot at the sacred deer, which attacks only if it or its cub is injured. People are even capable of killing their own kind.

It seems as if the film is trying to squeeze out of itself a person who only takes and harms all the time. The characters in bright jackets and hats look foreign to the poetic landscape image, saturated with images and metaphors. And even the guests of the village from the talent agency, who are able to adapt to the local order, eventually wander through the gloomy forest, reminiscent of the words of the great Italian poet: "Give up hope, everyone who enters here."

The dynamic ending, in stark contrast to the rest of the measured narrative, mixes objective and metaphorical realities, and shows a displaced time. Unfortunately, an important eco-story quickly tires because of the not so exciting plot and irritates with the most manipulative of all possible techniques. Even the conflict at the editing level, gluing long shots of trees with deer skulls in the ground and other contrasting images, gets boring in the middle. The basic idea of the gulf between the capitalist world and the natural environment is compulsively emphasized when the characters of the film look directly at the audience, as if with condemnation. Hamaguchi knows how to save our planet— to get all the people out of it. But should we all agree with this? For now, I just want to get behind the wheel of my car and rush off to nature, to some glamping.