Ironic and provocative. What is one to make of a
Written and directed by Ryusuke Hamagachi who gave us the incomparable, meditative Oscar winner, Drive My Car, EVIL DOES NOT EXIST begins with an extended tracking shot of tree branches reaching high into the sky. It is tranquil, leisurely, a communing with nature, a flourishing of flora and fauna, a veritable Garden of Eden. No evil exists here.
But surely every paradise has its serpent? Like the distant gun shots of deer hunters and the occasional skeletal remains of gut-shot fauns.
We are in the wild environs of Harasawa, a tiny village located deep in the forest, where widower single father Takumi and his eight-year-old daughter Hana live a simple life surrounded by pristine lakes, mountains and roaming deer. He’s the local odd job man, woodcutter, water carrier and wild wasabi gatherer.
Their quiet lives are interrupted when talent agents employed by a Tokyo urban development company visit the town proposing a ‘glamping project’ – a weekend decompression chamber for well-heeled city vacationers.
At a town hall meeting, Takumi and the townsfolk warn the company emissaries that the development will pose a threat to the delicate ecological balance of the area. The villagers are concerned that sewage and security concerns have not been responsibly worked out and request these concerns be conveyed to the development bosses.
Having conveyed the locals’ worries, the ambassadors are ordered back to bribe and corrupt Takumi so the project can be fast tracked and post pandemic subsidies can be advantaged.
EVIL DOES NOT EXIST is an extended haiku, lyrical, unhurried, filmed with the pace of the thawing snow and the slow setting sun against which it is set. The narrative is redolent of Raymond Carver’s short stories, full of the mundane but also simmering with the subtly marvellous.
Featuring a staggering, enigmatic finale that will spark debate long after the credits, EVIL DOES NOT EXIST is a quiet and thought-provoking masterpiece about the delicate balance between humanity and nature.