Il male non esiste

In a way it starts very cleverly with very slow nature scenes, illustrating how closely connected these people are to their natural surroundings, how they live off and in harmony with the land. They gather wood for heating, they collect spring water for drinking and cooking, they recharge by walking long distances and admiring the stunning beauty of the surroundings, they memorize the different trees, they look out for wild animals, they help each other.

And then Hamaguchi is the perfect director to create a scene showing a public gathering with public speakers and audience interaction. He did a lengthy scene in Happy Hour as well. He can create meaningful dialogue with stand-out lines. And quite a bit of tension. And we move to the theme of capitalism corrupting everything in its path, with no regard for the destruction it leaves behind. It's facts, figures, stats, consultant advice, bending the law and using it to your advantage. The waste of five people is still below the accepted limit of pollution. It's better than city water anyway.

Then we dig deeper into the struggles of the glamping company workers, who are caught between empathizing with the locals and working for a man who wants to make money. He is not exactly a ruthless money man, he is actually trying to run a profitable business and sees the bottom line. The advisor is the cynical one. But the director takes the advice to heart. The funds are received and partially spent, he can't back down.

And then there's the enigmatic Takumi, the quiet, but trusted lumberjack, or jack of all trades and the poor hapless Takahashi, the former talent agent who experiences a sudden urge to commune with nature.

Slow start that kind of makes sense in the grand scheme of things, but it still tests your patience, and indeed a very odd, somewhat upsetting and inexplicable ending. The middle part is sublime but the rest didn't quite gel well together.

I read the director's explanation, but it's still not coming through in my opinion.

A local benri-ya-san (handyman), a single father in a provincial town near Tokyo, gets involved with big city interlopers looking to see up an ill-conceived glamping project in the area.

I am not a fan of slow cinema or the long take, and feared the worst when this film opened on Takumi taking an age to chop firewood, then taking an age to gather water from a stream. But as the film stuck to its pace and Takumi gives daughter Hana a piggy-back through the forest, pointing out species of trees and wildlife tracks, I was drawn into the rhythm of Takumi's day-to-day existence. A discordant note arrived jarringly, as the haunting soundtrack abruptly cut out on the edit. As a device to create a sense of foreboding it could have been heavy-handed, but here it is a bold choice that sits in counterpoint with the natural beauty on display.

The story plays out the theme imbibed in the title resolutely. Takumi is no Crocodile Dundee; he knows nature and has an even temperament, but his forgetfulness leads him to forgetting to pick up his daughter once too often. And even at home, he obsesses over drawing when his daughter craves attention. His deceased wife is never mentioned, but her presence-through-absence hangs over every scene of family life.

The big city interlopers as first appear like pantomime villains. But then another side to them, too, is revealed. Takahashi comes across as a pompous fool in the village meeting, but there is a sincerity to his attempts to live a meaningful life, and we believe him when he talks during a long drive about wanting to dedicate his life to making his partner happy. His subordinate Mayuzumi at first appears to be the voice of pragmatism and common sense. But during the same drive we hear that she left a job as a carer to work in TV, a world she is fully aware is full of "lowlifes." She, too, has a shallow side. No one in this world is without shadows. When these three characters are thrown together in the film's last act, it is impossible to fathom where events will lead.

Where they do lead is to a point that audiences will either love or hate. Perhaps conditioned by the bum-numbing running time of Hamaguchi's previous film, Drive My Car, I for a fleeting moment thought the real action of the film was just beginning, when it suddenly ended. In a film full of jarring moments, this was the most impactful. Some might say egregious.

The performances Hamaguchi draws from his cast are flawless. I was stunned to read that Hitoshi Omika was an AD before this. His magnetism is simply off the scale. Ryûji Kosaka captures a certain kind of frail but annoying masculinity to a tee. Ayaka Shibutani shines in an understated but pitch perfect outing.

Evil Does Not Exist throws up a more questions than answers. It is an intriguing film, frustrating even, but Hamaguchi makes bold choices here and displays a confidence and maturity that is admirable. Three days after going to the cinema, I am still thinking about this film, still actually wondering if I liked it. Some are calling it a masterpiece, but I'm not so sure. It is though, without a doubt, well worth seeing.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi has made some interesting movies in his career like Drive My Car, Happy Hour, and Asako I & II. While I haven't been wowed by his works, I appreciate many aspects of his style and approach.

Throughout, this movie has some wonderful colorful productions, camerawork, sound designs and atmosphere which helped add layers of the nature landscapes and environment. The narrative provides some interesting themes of nature, conflict of interest, humans and humans vs. Nature issues and explores some interesting aspects that are strong. The performances are all pretty good as well.

However, I am a bit underwhelmed with certain aspects as I found some of the themes feeling a little uneven to work Hamaguchi is wanting to express. Especially when it comes to the characters as while I did found some of the characters interesting, I didn't feel too emotionally connected with their personalities and purpose which made it a bit difficult to fully invest at times.

The soundtrack is wonderful and the dialogue is solid. The film does suffer some pacing issues and with an ending that leaves to many interpretations which may be frustrating for some. Overall, despite it's flaws, it's mediative and nature experience made this movie pretty good.

This surreal 2023 film by Hanaguchi, begins as a straight narrative begining with opening micro/macro shots of Japanese landscape. It focused on a young village situated by rivers which becomes a possible site for Toyko's tourist industry.

It follows rural villagers who are not right with the recent interest of their surroundings by outsiders. During a planning session between them and reps from the tourist company, they learned that a Toyko based firm wants to create a "glamping" vacation site for urban trotters.

Things begin to clash between reps and the locals. The representatives reach back to Tokyo office who assigns them to interact more with villagers, how to learn from them. A direct and humble interaction of Toyko reps and locals ensues.

The rest of the story, evolves a beautiful piece of surrealism. Playing with subtleties with useful shots of the natural landscape match with the notion of what is evil. It's the corporate greed, and it's reluctance to understand basic principles of life without business interest.

Obviously these topics are designed within a Japanese cultural context, the average movie viewers will probably miss the clues or references leading up to an very questionable climax - what just happened. Supposedly this was the subjective outcome desired by the film's director.

The film's director (Hanaguchi) had an open ended situation for viewers' interpretations. This film tackles alot of allegorical symbols, within the nature of the woods and the human behaviour.

It's funny to see people who no doubt gushed over "Perfect Days" dismiss "Evil Does Not Exist" as "boring" and "obscure". Like PD, it begins by following a man's quotidian routine: chopping wood, drawing water, identifying wild plants, teaching his daughter the names of trees. Perhaps the fact that he lives in a mountain town of no architectural or historical significance is what turns them off, but I found Takumi's activities as riveting as those of PD's public toilet cleaner.

As in "Drive My Car", we're exposed to a Japan that a few visitors--including many Japanese--have seen. As someone who was raised in Japan and returns regularly, I was thrilled to see a mountain location like the places I visited last year. I also found the plot--the incursion of a glamping company on the town's pristine land--riveting. What began as a fight-the-power, urban-rural plot turned out completely differently from the norm, a surprise I'm still thinking about days later.