4 stars out of 5
In the past 2.5 years, I’ve quietly become a fan of writer/director Ryûke Hamaguchi. His previous effort, Drive My Car (based on a Haruki Murakami short story), was my favorite film of 2021. And his anthology film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy was pretty compelling as well. Now this would be my first time seeing a feature-length tale that had sprung wholly from Hamaguchi’s own mind.
Did he take to heart my warning in the Fortune and Fantasy review “against making movies that are too talky”? Regardless, silence plays a major role in this film. (It begins with several wordless minutes as the camera looks up at trees.) This is a contemplation of nature in which the drama slowly unfolds, thanks to us pesky humans of course.
We meet Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), a odd-job man in a rural Japanese village. He cuts wood, transports water, you name it. Young daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) is learning — with dad’s help — to appreciate the natural world. Life is simple, life is good.
The badness lurks in the background. The village was only formed after WWII for people to flee Tokyo. Also, what happened to Hana’s mom?
And now an Evil Company wants to build a glamping (glamorous camping) site in the village. Takahashi and Mayuzumi are p.r. hacks from the evil company explaining all the wonderful aspects of the site to the villagers. The people are suspicious. Is the septic tank big enough? Will their water source be ruined? Will tourists start fires, destroying the forest?
In many ways, it’s a classic Man vs. Nature scenario. The p.r. hacks don’t have an answer. And neither does Ryûke Hamaguchi. But he wants you to think about our relationship with nature, and our often feeble attempts to tame it. The ending has sparked discussion, and indeed, I found myself in the lobby afterward chatting with fellow moviegoers. Not too shabby when art can accomplish that.
Movie Review: Evil Does Not Exist
One response to “Movie Review: Evil Does Not Exist”
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I was with it up until the very last scene. Maybe I wouldn’t feel this way if I saw it again. But as I left the theater, I felt I was only maybe 50 percent sure that I knew what it meant. Thinking about it, I understood. Perhaps that is better. Still, I felt and feel unsatisfied. I’m not arguing about the meaning of the sequence, only its means. Can you replay that quick flash of images in your memory and feel that it said what it was intended to?