Ryûsuke Hamaguchi heads to the countryside for eco-drama 'Evil Does Not Exist'
If you always hurt the one you love, then no one adores nature more than humanity. Certainly the 6000 residents of the small rural town of Mizubiki are sincere in their ability to respect and live alongside it, but as “Drive My Car” director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi makes clear in his latest film “Evil Does Not Exist,“ trouble is on its way.
Among the locals are Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) and his 8-year-old daughter, Hana (Ryô Nishikawa), who live a life that has remained pretty idyllic despite the death of their matriarch. Chances are cinephiles and everyone in this movie’s intended audience will swoon at the sight of Takumi making his living, which happens to be providing wild wasabi and almost unnaturally pristine water to the local udon restaurant, then chopping up fuel for their wood burning stove in his home.
Safely ensconced in our own dwellings with modern heating and wifi, it’s the best position to shake our heads when a Tokyo talent agency plans to infect the area with an opulent glamping site to cater to the city’s wealthy elite. For all the slow, methodical burn that Hamaguchi builds, it’s made immediately clear how much havoc this project will eventually wreak throughout the community: a septic tank which will pollute the water the town treasures, the constant campfires changing the nature of the air they breathe, and how it likely won’t even benefit the locals financially, with much of the wealth projected to remain on site rather than benefiting the residents and their businesses.
Such is the nature of late stage capitalism that even selling out isn’t a viable option for the majority of us. Even the two PR representatives, who start out mostly dismissing any and all concerns with smiling indifference, slowly come to realize just what they’re complicit in and what they are in fact destroying. The film makes them more hapless than destructive, and willing to change, but what is truly chilling is how little this may matter in the face of a soulless machine which has more or less dispensed with human input and thrives solely on profits.
Much like its characters, “Evil Does Not Exist” takes an unadorned approach to its moral fable, even as it clothes its central father and daughter duo in saintly blue and has nature rise up against a humanity which again seeks to plunder it. The movie can’t completely shed its origins as a short film which could’ve easily remained that way, but its methodology nevertheless demands both careful attention and at least two viewings to appreciate its allegedly simplistic take on the human ability to rampantly consume even when we attempt to retreat from it. If only all filmmakers were allowed to take such care and time with their art. And art is very much what “Evil Does Not Exist” is.
Grade: A-
