A gently paced, contemplative eco-thriller with a sudden brutal twist reunites the musical talent of Eiko Ishibashi and the visual grace of Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
The genesis of Evil Does Not Exist, the latest film from Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy) is an interesting one. The composer of the score of Drive My Car, Eiko Ishibashi, asked Hamaguchi if he would create some visuals for a live performance of her work. While putting together the images for Ishibashi and creating what eventually became a silent film featuring the composer’s music – Gift – Hamaguchi also began to develop the idea of adapting the resultant footage into a parallel film with dialogue, and so Evil Does Not Exist was born.
Set in a village outside the sprawl of the city of Tokyo, Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) and his young daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) live a modest life in a rural community. Together with the other local inhabitants, they work with the flora and fauna alongside which they exist. In fact, they feel as much a part of the habitat as the deer which live in the woods or the edible plants which grow on the banks of the stream where the local restaurant sources its water for cooking. They’re attuned to the cycle of the seasons and the ways of working together as a community. Rural life is about to be challenged, however, as a company in Tokyo presents its plans to build a glamping site nearby, where city residents can visit to decompress. Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani)are dispatched from the city to present the plans at a residents’ meeting. The fallout from the encounter will have lasting effects on everyone’s lives.
Evil Does Not Exist embraces its origins in that dialogue is kept to a minimum, with the exception of a handful of scenes(yes, one of them while on an extended car journey). One, in particular, proves to be pivotal; a meeting at which the local residents eloquently point out the flaws in the proposal to the bemused company representatives is beautifully written and impressively acted, and is in its own way a gentle yet powerful reminder of how precarious the current environmental balance is, without being at all preachy.
In fact, although the environmental message is clear, the film moves towards a darker and more unanticipated human conclusion, which had me watching the last section again just to see if I’d missed something. The beauty of it was that I hadn’t – the unexpected ending has remained with me and leaves a haunting feeling of sadness and despair.
The film gives ample scope for Eiko Ishibashi’s beautiful music to shine. Lengthy shots of treetops, snow-covered fields, and other rural settings not only convey the emotional drive of the film – and to an extent set the context for what is about to happen – but the shots also allow space for the score to come into its own in a delicate and contemplative fashion.
Evil Does Not Exist is a gentle conversation between images, story, and sound; none of the participants dominates, but they each listen to the other and together create something quite beautiful.
Evil Does Not Exist will be released in the UK & Ireland on 5th April 2024.
A gently paced, contemplative eco-thriller with a sudden brutal twist reunites the musical talent of Eiko Ishibashi and the visual grace of Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
The genesis of Evil Does Not Exist, the latest film from Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy) is an interesting one. The composer of the score of Drive My Car, Eiko Ishibashi, asked Hamaguchi if he would create some visuals for a live performance of her work. While putting together the images for Ishibashi and creating what eventually became a silent film featuring the composer’s music – Gift – Hamaguchi also began to develop the idea of adapting the resultant footage into a parallel film with dialogue, and so Evil Does Not Exist was born.
Set in a village outside the sprawl of the city of Tokyo, Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) and his young daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) live a modest life in a rural community. Together with the other local inhabitants, they work with the flora and fauna alongside which they exist. In fact, they feel as much a part of the habitat as the deer which live in the woods or the edible plants which grow on the banks of the stream where the local restaurant sources its water for cooking. They’re attuned to the cycle of the seasons and the ways of working together as a community. Rural life is about to be challenged, however, as a company in Tokyo presents its plans to build a glamping site nearby, where city residents can visit to decompress. Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani)are dispatched from the city to present the plans at a residents’ meeting. The fallout from the encounter will have lasting effects on everyone’s lives.
Evil Does Not Exist embraces its origins in that dialogue is kept to a minimum, with the exception of a handful of scenes(yes, one of them while on an extended car journey). One, in particular, proves to be pivotal; a meeting at which the local residents eloquently point out the flaws in the proposal to the bemused company representatives is beautifully written and impressively acted, and is in its own way a gentle yet powerful reminder of how precarious the current environmental balance is, without being at all preachy.
In fact, although the environmental message is clear, the film moves towards a darker and more unanticipated human conclusion, which had me watching the last section again just to see if I’d missed something. The beauty of it was that I hadn’t – the unexpected ending has remained with me and leaves a haunting feeling of sadness and despair.
The film gives ample scope for Eiko Ishibashi’s beautiful music to shine. Lengthy shots of treetops, snow-covered fields, and other rural settings not only convey the emotional drive of the film – and to an extent set the context for what is about to happen – but the shots also allow space for the score to come into its own in a delicate and contemplative fashion.
Evil Does Not Exist is a gentle conversation between images, story, and sound; none of the participants dominates, but they each listen to the other and together create something quite beautiful.
Evil Does Not Exist will be released in the UK & Ireland on 5th April 2024.
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