Evil Does Not Exist review – beautifully precise | Little White Lies

Evil Does Not Exist review – beau­ti­ful­ly precise

28 Mar 2024 / Released: 05 Apr 2024

Young person wearing a blue and grey striped hat and a blue winter coat, looking thoughtful.
Young person wearing a blue and grey striped hat and a blue winter coat, looking thoughtful.
4

Anticipation.

The next act following the writer/director’s surprise Oscar success with Drive My Car.

4

Enjoyment.

An intimate, ethereal study on the ideological tensions between city and country.

5

In Retrospect.

Hamaguchi is a master craftsperson, and this beautifully strange film leaves its mark.

Ryû­suke Ham­aguchi’s dra­ma about a moun­tain vil­lage threat­ened by a new devel­op­ment is a haunt­ing depic­tion of the gulf between cap­i­tal­ism and environmentalism.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist opens beneath a canopy of trees, stripped bare by win­ter. We glide for­ward with our gaze fixed upwards at their branch­es, grey and thread­like against the uni­form light of the sky. In a return­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ham­aguchi after Dri­ve My Car, com­pos­er Eiko Ishibashi’s tremu­lous string score dis­lodges some­thing ten­der with­in your chest, like a stone being knocked loose at the mouth of a river.

We spend a lot of time look­ing. So does Hana, a young girl wear­ing a striped beanie and tiny, tiny yel­low gloves (played by a preter­nat­u­ral­ly ground­ed Ryo Nishikawa). Her father Taku­mi (Hitoshi Omi­ka of Wheel of For­tune and Fan­ta­sy) is an unsmil­ing, qui­et man who shares his daughter’s obser­va­tion­al gaze and car­ries out odd jobs here in Mizu­bi­ki Vil­lage, just two hours out­side of Tokyo. Some­times togeth­er, some­times alone, this is what they see: Wild wasabi, sprout­ing unruly on the incline of a small hill. Clear moun­tain springs, rush­ing play­ful­ly over mossy stones. The skele­ton of a fawn, felled by an unknown hunter. There will be only two gun­shots heard in this film, and they are monumental.

Evil Does Not Exist has some­thing grand, almost pros­e­lytis­ing about its title. So it’s per­haps odd at first that Hamaguchi’s beau­ti­ful­ly pre­cise film – so restrained and exact­ing that its dénoue­ment is noth­ing less than earth-shat­ter­ing – is about glamp­ing. Rel­a­tive to the affect­ing beau­ty of this vil­lage and the easy ways its peo­ple and envi­ron­ment tan­gle togeth­er, it’s an instinc­tive­ly ugly con­cept. As we soon realise after the actors repeat­ed­ly form their lips around its clum­sy syl­la­bles, glamp­ing’ is an ugly word, too: a mutt of urban cap­i­tal­ism, con­sum­ing things fun­da­men­tal­ly incom­pat­i­ble with its diges­tive system.

When two Tokyo tal­ent agency rep­re­sen­ta­tives arrive in Mizu­bi­ki to brief its res­i­dents about a glamp­ing site they’re con­struct­ing as a com­pa­ny retreat, we realise why Ham­aguchi spends so much time entreat­ing us to qui­et­ly gaze at the land­scape. Mizubiki’s ecol­o­gy is placed in the cen­tre of the frame: a pheas­ant feath­er held up to the sun­light, an expanse of white snow gen­tly marred by deer tracks. These com­po­si­tions nev­er feel like back­drops, but a way for the land to com­mu­ni­cate with us through the cam­era – reori­ent­ing our time, atten­tion, and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty in rela­tion to it. The film’s char­ac­ters some­times look direct­ly at us, like we take the place of the wild wasabi or the deer skull.

So when the Tokyo lack­eys arrive with an adver­tise­ment for the glamp­ing project accom­pa­nied by some calm­ing roy­al­ty-free track, it’s grat­ing. We’re see­ing the same trees, the same crys­talline water; but as the stony faces of the vil­lagers tell us, we couldn’t be look­ing at things more dif­fer­ent­ly. So much doesn’t make sense,” a young man says when the floor is opened for ques­tions, and it doesn’t – Hamaguchi’s film exca­vates exact­ly why it’s so hard to make some­one under­stand that what you do upstream will affect those liv­ing down­stream”. Uttered calm­ly dur­ing a riv­et­ing back-and-forth about the site’s sep­tic tank, this tru­ism sum­mates the philo­soph­i­cal clash at the film’s heart – which in the director’s always-deft hands, slips into the super­nat­ur­al. Foren­sic calm is sub­sti­tut­ed by an implo­sive hor­ror in the film’s final min­utes – one that cuts so swift­ly you only see the blood after it’s been drawn.

So care­ful­ly and empa­thet­i­cal­ly con­struct­ed – even towards its vil­lains” – that it feels miles away from didac­ti­cism, this shapeshift­ing eco­log­i­cal tale becomes a yearn­ing rumi­na­tion on the alien­ations of mod­ern life, and the qui­et­ly vio­lent seams where things in this world are chang­ing and dying rapid­ly while we lack the lan­guage to arrive at the same des­ti­na­tion, no mat­ter how much peo­ple say they’re lis­ten­ing. The Tokyo agency pro­pos­es to erect the glamp­ing site in the path of the deer trail. Where would the deer go?” Taku­mi asks qui­et­ly, some­thing con­cealed in his ques­tion. Some­where else, I guess,” one of the reps replies. He for­gets some­thing Taku­mi explained ear­li­er about injured deer: if they can’t run, they’ll fight back.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.