Evil Does Not Exist
Written and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Starring Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani
Rated PG
Now Playing in US and Canadian theatres
Runtime: 106 minutes

by Jo Rempel, Staff Writer

I was commuting to a doctor’s appointment when I heard a funny phrase coming from another passenger’s phone. He was watching a digital painting tutorial at full volume: this particular lesson was on nature, or maybe just trees. The instructor gives an awkward segue into a demonstration. “If I had to paint a canopy of trees…” And then she goes on to paint this hypothetical canopy. I managed to tune the video out and dwelled on the if and the had to: on what outside force would demand that an artist paint a canopy of trees; on the notion that honing one’s technique is a form of doomsday preparation; and on the assumption that painting a canopy of trees is not inherently desirable. 

Up until now, writer/director Ryusuke Hamaguchi has been making films that stick to an urban portrait of Japan. In his breakthrough hits Happy Hour and Drive My Car, Hamaguchi brought brutalism to the melodrama: minimalist, sprawling, opaque, his films reflect the city’s often untapped rigidity. There is a sense of permanence, that our built environments are meant to outlast our hardships. 

Hamaguchi’s latest, Evil Does Not Exist, is set in a small village outside of Tokyo, in the early spring. Frost along the ground is beginning to clear. Spring water flows downhill, through narrow, rocky channels, a buried treasure. Our protagonist is Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), the village jack of all trades. He is beautifully stoic, ethically desirable. In long, studious takes, we watch him harvest water for the local noodle restaurant, chop wood, drive to his daughter Hana’s (Ryo Nishikawa) school. 

The world we are placed in is one that is unspecialized, unformed, uncomplicated. Naturally this does not last. Cashing in on post-pandemic subsidies, a talent agency called “Playmode” has bought up land to be used as a “glamping” site, opening this summer (attack of the portmanteaus!). Needless to say, corners are being cut. The site will be understaffed; the septic tank has half the capacity of the site proper; and positioned uphill, the tank is going to pollute the water supply. This is supposed to benefit the local economy. It becomes clear that our environments are built over something. This is, in broad strokes, the film’s plot: not Takumi and his fellow villagers’ struggle against the development project, but the fact that change is happening. 

Hamaguchi does not venerate an uncorrupted nature where we all must return, as to save ourselves from modern immoralities. This is the appeal of glamping, that experiencing the great outdoors is a balm for the soul weary from work, traffic, supermarkets, tap water, bright lights and loud noises. Evil Does Not Exist can’t help but soothe us. The frame is a controlled environment. Yet serene and painterly they may be (the forest always seems to drip blue and green), every sustained wide shot is the product of an imperative to document the world “as it is”, in hopes of letting us deprioritize any one action. Sure, your eyes could stay fixed on Takumi as he chops wood. But if you don’t drift up to the sky or across to the road, you’re unlikely to gain veneration for the woodsman’s life. Takumi’s archetypal goodness is a form of distancing. He is good at his job, which is a job like any other; his personhood is not defined by his action. 

Takumi explains to the agency’s PR people how his grandfather was incentivized by the government to farm here shortly after the second world war, incentivized just as Playmode is by government dollars and consumer interest charts and safety margins. Evil Does Not Exist does not seek to mend the divide between humans and nature. Even if false, the divide is maintained by our actions and trickles down into our words. Here, human speech is an alienating force. (There is a shorter, silent version of Evil Does Not Exist with an extended score by Eiko Ishibashi currently on tour.)

This is to say that Hamaguchi flips the script, showing humans as outsiders within our gaze. There are two moments early on that feel radical in how they reorient our perception. 

First, we have the opening two shots. One: drifting below the barren branches, two sides with a river of blue between them, on the verge of bridging the sky entirely. The camera’s continuous scroll creates illusory movements, as if we were looking at dozens of independent extremities, calling to each other, Ishibashi’s lamenting string score reflecting their thinness, as well as the resonance between the canopy above and the roots below. This canopy has been like this for years; beneath, the shade has been waxing for centuries. Two: A young girl, gazing upwards (we will later learn that this girl is Hana). Traditionally, an eyeline match will show us our subject, followed by what they are looking at. If Hana is our subject, then this order is reversed. But there is also the lingering feeling that the trees gaze down at her just the same. 

The next scene introduces us to Takumi. One of his odd jobs is to assist Kazuo (Hiroyuki Miura) in gathering spring water for the noodle shop. The two are used to their company to the point of aimlessness—Takumi is late picking up Hana from school. Then, he sees us. Takumi and Kazuo kneel down and look directly at the camera. Takumi just spotted a patch of wild wasabi, which would do wonders with customers; we are staring back at him as that green opportunity. Rarely does one get to feel so vulnerable as a viewer. 

On the other hand, there is something almost divine in my (hopefully your) embodied greenness. There is hope in this stillness. In moments like this, Evil Does Not Exist makes action itself questionable. Do we think of a rhizome as willing its growth? The growth is inherent to its being. The film prompts us to detangle ourselves from language and see clearly: that there is no hypothetical nature; that our environments are not built, but rather building.