Evil Does Not Exist (2023)

Powerful eco-fable with unexpected ending - Evil Does Not Exist review by PD

This powerful eco-fable from ‘Drive my Car’ director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, was for me all-but ruined by a truly unexpected ending.

It centres on the taciturn Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), the woodcutter, water-gatherer and all-round handyman of Mizubiki village, a community of just 6,000 people who live in symbiosis with their rural surroundings whose rustic lifestyle Takumi exemplifies. With intent, forensic interest, Yoshio Kitagawa’s unobtrusive camera observes him from a short distance, as he goes through what seem to be near-daily rituals: chopping firewood, collecting spring water for the local udon restaurant, and forgetting to pick up his little daughter Hana from school. But, situated close enough to Tokyo to be an easy drive yet far enough for its landscapes to feel light years from the capital’s skyscrapers and offices, Mizubiki makes an attractive potential tourist destination, and sure enough, a company called Playmode has acquired a package of land they’re keen to develop for “glamorous camping” aka glamping — a concept so self-evidently inane that surely only late-late-capitalism could have dreamt it up. A wonderful scene involving a meeting of the village with two Playmode reps is a superb snapshot of community solidarity meeting corporate stonewalling – it’s highly impressive that Hamaguchi manages to make the discussion of the location, capacity and efficiency of a septic tank into such absorbing drama.

This is a story made far more of details and textures than of grand actions. Firstly, it turns out that neither of the reps are the heartless automatons they might at first seem, and secondly, the image of rural life is not overly prettified, nor unduly invested in the idea that a traditional way of life is somehow inherently more virtuous than life in a city. Indeed, as Takumi points out, the villagers are hardly that much more “traditional” than the newcomers — the region was only designated for settling after the war. The composite image we build up from all these sedate, hypnotic fragments, is one of fundamentally decent people, moving in the right direction, flowing with the stream, caring to find common ground with each other and with the common ground itself.

The film successfully intertwines these various elements until a utterly confounding, hard-to-absorb ending. It’s rare that a film’s final scenes should so materially change the inflection of its meaning, as Hamaguchi suddenly swings away from its prior axis of cautious, melancholy optimism toward something far colder, wintrier and more fraught. It may well be bleakly fascinating to witness a filmmaker paint so subtle and soothing a portrait of humanity, only to finally remind us that there is no soothing nature – human or otherwise, but for me if the film had ended more ambiguously, or indeed just a few minutes earlier, it would ultimately have been far more powerful.