Cinema Without Borders: Evil Does Not Exist—Nature's rage

On the surface, nothing much appears to happen in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist but an entire inner and outer world—of humans, animals and nature—transforms in a matter of 106 minutes of the film’s run time.
It’s a classic tale of the rural-urban, human-animal, nature-civilisation divide, that dwells on the ecological dangers lurking in rapid, inconsiderate urbanisation. Prolific Hamaguchi—quickly back from the Oscar winner Drive My Car in 2021—tells it like a slow-burn thriller infused with an overwhelming ominousness at each step of the way, heightened by Eiko Ishibashi’s haunting musical score. The film competes at the third Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, after premiering in Venice.
Evil Does Not Exist is about a harmonious community living serenely, amidst nature with freely roaming deer for company, in the mountainside of Harasawa village near Tokyo. There is the odd job man Takumi (Hitoshi Omika saying a lot with his sedate and stoic presence), also a single father bringing up his 8-year-old daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa). There are long sequences of his banal, simple daily routine—chopping wood, fetching water from the spring upstream, educating his daughter about the trees in the forests. There is the udon food stall, where the soba noodles taste good because of the spring water used in their preparation. In fact, it’s this water that is the lifeline of the residents of Harasawa.
On the other hand, are the exploitative developers, intent on building a glamping (glamorous or luxury camping) site in the outskirts of the village, an escape for the city slickers that would expose the local population to several environmental dangers. The tourism hotspot would help boost the local economy, create more jobs, increase sales and invigorate the region; they claim. But the villagers aren’t oblivious to what more it would truly entail—fire hazards and the septic tank drain polluting their pure water tanks, among other concerns.
A briefing held with the representatives of the developers—Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani)—reveals the villagers’ innate wisdom as opposed to the blind rapacity of the businessmen. It will turn our world upside down, the essence of our village is at stake; they say. However, a mere token gesture, the meeting exposes the agency’s determination to go ahead with the tourism project regardless of the resistance by the locals. Five people's worth of sewage landing into wells meant for 6000 is “safe”, for them. They are rushing into it because of the subsidies and to capitalise on the first-mover advantage. “It’s like talking to a wall…they are throwing us under the bus for quick bucks,” say the villagers.
Hamaguchi captures nature in all its grandeur and magnificence even as he packs in a detailed discourse on settlers and outsiders, development and destruction and the urgency for balance and conservation in just one crucial meeting sequence. As the developers devise plans to con the locals and good and evil forces come into conflict, nature rises in its own defence with the film itself moving towards a chilling, beguiling finale.
Hamaguchi finds goodness on both sides of the business divide. The corporates do get painted with broad brushstrokes, as unthinking, uncaring, selfish and materialistic. However, in just one scene that they feature in, their agents get as humanely fleshed out as the villagers. As the narrative moves with them to the city and then back to the village, Hamaguchi gives us a peep into their personal lives, of both personal vacuum, loneliness, professional hollowness and economic instability. They are puppets whose strings are in the control of their masters. But they are aware of their unfulfilled lives and the urgency to be someplace else, get out of the routine and do something more satisfying and productive. Like cutting wood and feeding cattle that Takumi does day in and day out. The bond they manage to forge with him, despite their contrarian pulls of life, is perhaps the most affirming thing in the film. An assertion of the profundity embedded in simplicity. All we need to do is embrace it.