Evil Does Not Exist

Directed by Hamaguchi Ryusuke

Cast: Omika Hitoshi, Nishikawa Ryo, Kosaka Ryuji, ShibutaniAyaka, Kikuchi Hazuki, Miura Hiroyuki
Official website (2024)

Review by Michael Tsang

Please note that this review contains spoilers

Director Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s new film is without doubt one of the most divisive films of the year. Being voted Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival and awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2023 might have meant that it is loved by some film professionals and filmgoers, but there are also many who would find the film puzzling, wanting, or even lacking. At 100 minutes, the film feels underdeveloped on at least two levels: on narrative structure, with the film ending at the point of climax with a shocking crime sans closure; and on plot construction, with very few hints given to suggest the advent of said violence. Yet, this may be read as a deliberate move on Hamaguchi’s part to generate conversations among the audience, and conversation is perhaps a major element missing in contemporary life. In addition, one’s judgment of the film depends very much on one’s imagination of what art should achieve—in other words, the most significant achievement of the film, perhaps, is that it questions us on the meaning of art.

The film’s title is sometimes stylised with the word ‘Not’ appearing in red and the other words in white, hinting at the effect that if ‘Not’ is crossed out, it would have read ‘Evil Does Exist’. Indeed, evil exists in the film—everywhere, in everyone. The boss of the talent agency and the consultant, who hired two staffers to push through a glamping project, are the clearer evils. Without a story arc of their own, they are easily perceived as representing the opportunist, capitalist narrative. Among the two staffers, the man is equally arrogant and is of the anthropocentric view that the glamping site is not a problem because deer would naturally avoid passing through it. More vaguely, the deer hunters, who never appear on screen, are the ones wounding the deer which normally would not attack humans. However, even the villagers, who claim to respect nature and coexist with it responsibly, are still infringing on natural resources (such as taking free water from the stream to run a ramen bar), albeit being the lesser of the evils.

The phrase ‘lesser of the (two) evils’ shows that evil, in fact, can be considered a spectrum. This may be a translation issue: for some viewers, ‘evil’ in English may suggest something unspeakably sinister, and while issues of environmental exploitation and disturbance to the village’s livelihood may be ethically questionable, the only ‘evil’ act really only occurs in the final scene. The word ‘aku’ in the Japanese title, however, may denote a wider range of understandings. The term ‘zen’aku’ for instance can be colloquially rendered as ‘good and bad’. Therefore, it may be helpful to think of ‘evil’ flexibly as any degree of negative impact inflicted upon others (including nature)—in this way even the villagers understand that their way of life, too, is a selfish intrusion of the environment, and no matter how eco-aware we humans may think of ourselves, this does not exonerate from the fact that, from the perspective of animals such as deer, human activity will always be a ‘bad’, disruptive deed. Such wildlife perspective is already made clear in the film poster with the young daughter looking into the camera—in the film, this becomes one of many back and forth cuts between the daughter’s point of view on the deer and vice versa. Besides wildlife, the true human victim here is the future generation, with the daughter being attacked by a wounded deer, becoming the sacrifice of environmental violence committed by adults.

It is tempting to side with the villagers and accept the film’s ostensible ecocritical message exposing metropolitan developmentalist haughtiness in encroaching on wild habitat. However, where conflicts arise, dialogue should be the main tool for a resolution. The terrible attack committed by the male protagonist Takumi in the film’s ending, which surely generates the most discussion among viewers, can be seen as the shutdown of conversations by one villager who on the surface appears harmless. Viewed this way, it is possible to deem the absence of conversation in our society the other main theme of the film—indeed, in various interviews, Hamaguchi says that he will leave it to the viewer’s imagination to ascertain what has happened. The refusal to fixate an interpretation for the viewer underscores the idea that the film is meant to stick with the viewers and to be talked about.

In this vein, then, Omika Hitoshi’s deadpan, almost robotic, acting as Takumi may be hollow for a purpose, although earlier scenes of Takumi axing wood logs turn out to foreshadow his latent capability for violence. Takumi’s negligence towards his daughter and the concerning absence of the mother also invite speculation on his character and his family’s story. He represents two extremes on the good-evil spectrum, where his quietness tricks viewers with a non-threatening façade, but his action at the end is probably the most heinous of all. This is possibly one issue that many viewers have towards the film, that Takumi is not a realistic character. Whatever his intentions may be (to be debated by viewers), the ending is formally interesting because seldom do we see a film that finishes at the point of climax—and one that is by nature a plot twist. Plot twists by definition introduce a surprise that the audience is not prepared for, but upon closer look, the film arguably uses subtle artistic clues to suggest an atmosphere of unease and tension, from scenes of haze and smoke that permeate the film, varying use of shades and lighting, to imageries of animals’ corpses and blood, and Ishibashi Eiko’s discordant soundtrack.

This film, of course, shares certain footages with GIFT, a silent film that Hamaguchi made at the same time to accompany Ishibashi’s live performances, all of which have passed already (although it is certainly hoped that there will be future reiterations). Thus, it may be important to consider the production context as well, in that the story and the characters are second to what was really an artistic collaboration and experimentation first and foremost. No opinion of Evil Does Not Exist, including this reviewer’s, will be comprehensive and nuanced enough without having experienced GIFT in the moment of Ishibashi’s live performances.

In the final straw, then, Evil Does Not Exist is an art film—both in terms of cinematographic techniques and in the way it reveals our attitudes and expectations towards works of art. A string of recent Japanese films share this tendency to defy closures or resolved endings, and I wonder if these films collectively help expose the facile assumptions that many of us tend to have towards storytelling, especially the taken for granted demand for logically-resolved plotlines and fully-developed round characters: if climate change and other environmental issues remain unresolved, why should this film? Thus, a negative verdict on the film would perhaps reveal more about our own complacent reliance and expectation of art to bear teleological value of displaying possible solutions to some social, political, or cultural problems. This film resists that temptation, so that we do not get sidetracked from the problem itself and move too hastily to discussing the efficacy of a possible resolution. What should the purpose of art be? Should art stop at the point of raising questions, or does it have to display a potential scenario of restorative justice?