Courtesy of Sideshow/Janus Films.

Evil Does Not Exist/悪は存在しない/Aku wa Sonzai Shinai

Rating **** Masterpiece

Directed by Hamaguchi Ryusuke

Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s films have never lacked a prevailing sense of mystery. Since his festival breakthrough Happy Hour (2015), his scripts have accurately been characterized as teeming with layered characterizations and rich dialogue, following a strict adherence to a realist depiction of the world: even the potentially outré element in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy‘s (2021) third segment, involving a worldwide computer virus, has the effect of further downplaying any overtly “unrealistic” element. But within those putative restrictions, the expansive nature of his scenarios lead into uncharted territory. This comes across most obviously in the great ruptures and leaps of logic: the wondrous epilogue to Drive My Car (2021), which Hamaguchi included out of a desire to not simply rest on a “perfect” ending; the central disappearance in Happy Hour, permanently altering the relationship dynamics of a previously stable quartet; the sly echoes between Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy‘s stories.

Evil Does Not Exist concludes with one such disruption, perhaps Hamaguchi’s most daring gambit yet, but from its opening moments it leans with supreme confidence into this ambiguous atmosphere. The first sequence—a continuous tracking shot trained upwards through a mountain forest in winter, interrupted by several cast and crew credit intertitles—initially presents a readily ascertainable filmmaking process before the experience of “simple” observation—guided by Ishibashi Eiko’s elegiac score—gradually turns the viewer’s mind towards all manner of possibilities of perspective and motion orientation. As I watched, the movement even seemed to suggest tree branches animated to slide up the screen, an alluring, intrusive unreality that spoke to the uncanniness of the normal. That the matter-of-fact following shot—a close-up frame between trees that a young girl steps into, eyes cast to the sky—feels at odds with the smooth, majestic-turned-disquieting procession of natural images beforehand only deepens the unsettling feeling.

Of course, part of Evil Does Not Exist‘s allure lies in the complete U-turn it would appear to present from Hamaguchi’s wholly unanticipated worldwide success with Drive My Car, still one of the most unanticipated (and deserving) instances of universal acclaim in recent memory. A 106-minute film that emerged out of a collaboration with Ishibashi—intended initially to serve as raw material for a medium-length visual accompaniment to a live performance—and starring crew member Omika Hitoshi as taciturn village handyman Takumi, it in many ways is the antithesis of the sprawling, dialogue-heavy, strictly professional nature of its predecessor.

But Hamaguchi, as much as any living filmmaker, is never content to simplify his proceedings, to—contrary to Drive My Car‘s signature image—simply follow a road down to its conclusion, both in the arc of his body of work thus far and within his individual films. It takes a full fifteen minutes before the “central” problem of Evil Does Not Exist—a planned glamping site running into the concerns of the neighboring village—introduces itself, in an offhand comment only truly elaborated upon another ten minutes later. Within that stretch of time, Hamaguchi casts his watchful eye on the details of nature, simultaneously taking in the forest, the trees, and the people that move through them.

It’s certainly telling that Hamaguchi’s signature “point-of-view” shots, wherein characters unexpectedly stare into the lens in close-up, are here typically construed as being from the vantage point of specific natural details, including a deer carcass and a patch of wild wasabi. As with the humanity that has taken up so much of his cinema, nature is not merely seen as an amorphous, all-expansive whole but instead an agglomeration of discrete beings, each with their own particular utility: wood to be used for Takumi’s own fireplace, spring water to provide for a specialty udon restaurant, stray bird feathers for a village elder’s harpsichord. In the moments before the “narrative” truly takes hold—made most clear in an unexpected dream on the part of Takumi’s daughter, which flashes back to images from her walk home with her father in a chronological disruption exactly when the film’s flow had seemed to be fully established—these inhabitants’ harmony with the world they walked through felt completely settled.

Evil Does Not Exist has already been lauded for its fifteen-minute meeting scene, an exemplary series of quiet but firm rebukes to two company representatives doubly out of their element: in an area of Japan they are completely unfamiliar with (despite the village being a few hours’ drive from Tokyo) and in their actual status as talent agency workers, contracted by the glamping company to pitch this far afield project. In Hamaguchi’s typically egalitarian approach, the establishment of the key village speakers creates an anticipation and investment in the specific concern each person will voice, in the particular manner they will couch an unmistakeable anger with the calamity that may soon be visited upon the place where they live. It is made clear that this is not merely a case of self-preservation: Takumi notes that the region was only settled after World War II, and that everyone in the village is an outsider. But within these parameters, the delicate balance already in place must be preserved.

But here, Hamaguchi chooses to reveal the delicate balance of his own film to be far different than might be expected. Evil Does Not Exist pivots to focus upon Takahashi (Kosaka Ryuji) and Mayuzumi (Shibutani Ayaka), the two company representatives, first as they express their misgivings in a Google Meets call in Tokyo and then as they travel back to the village, hoping to ask Takumi to personally aid with taking care of the glamping site. During their drive back, the conversation creates a genuine back-and-forth for the first time in the film, a constant volley of conversation as Takahashi and Mayuzumi discuss their work experiences and future plans, with the latter even making fun of the former when she spots a dating app notification on his phone. The change in tone is refreshing, but not as a respite per se: the scene on the whole continues with the same evenhandedness of execution as prior dialogue scenes. Instead, it feels like a further broadening of horizons, something that opens the possibilities of what this particular film can achieve.

It is here, then, where the ending fully comes into play. Without saying anything specific, it is best understood as a continuous movement, the primacy of nature so fully embodied in the opening sequences reasserting itself upon this new understanding of each of these characters. It begins with a truly stunning shot of Mayuzumi at Takumi’s cabin, watching the fog roll in as a broadcast plays on the community intercom, with the natural forces obscuring what had on the road seemed to be a crystalline image. The ultimate occurrences are desperately sad, but, per the title, they cannot be simply distilled down to a judgment according to human values. Like with Ishibashi’s varied score, part mournful strings and part muted electronics, Hamaguchi constantly searches for a new means of conveying an essential mystery of human behavior; here, he has found yet another realm to ponder.