Writer: Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
There is only one perfect view, E.M. Forster write, that of the sky above our heads. It is a sentiment that comes startlingly to mind in the extended opening tracking shot of Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi’s new film Evil Does Not Exist which glances upwards through a forest of branches splayed against the sky. A film about humanity respecting and understanding the natural world, a community life that is drawn from it and the perils of gentrification, Hamaguchi and Ishibashi’s movie develops a slow-burn grip as two outsiders and the viewer are drawn into the life of a remote village several miles of Tokyo.
Handyman Takumi chops and saws wood, fetches water from the local spring and looks after his daughter Hana, an isolated figure but also an essential part of the town, respected by the elders. When a marketing firm come to present a glamping idea they think will transform the area, the community have major concerns about the impact of their local environment so the two outsiders try to understand Takumi’s world a little better.
Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi film is a celebration of nature and of respecting the environment to which communities must adapt. Evil Does Not Exist spends some time establishing the routines of Takumi’s day, the methodical and skilled log cutting using a chain saw and axe, as well as the filling and cumbersome transport of hefty water canisters to his car. There is an almost documentary style to his processing-based filming, a deliberate slowness in framing the film that remains engaging before finally affecting the plot when the city-dwellers are inducted into these simple but vital rituals.
The centrepiece of the story is a lengthy town hall meeting in which the glamping representatives endure a calmly delivered but sustained dismantling of their concept. Through this, Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi chart their dwindling confidence, the slightly patronising certainty that deflates as the residents adjust the understanding of the local area and the likely impact. Through this the townspeople also come into view, their own hierarchies of respect and an emphasis on working with them in the creation of new schemes that determines a more directive plot thereafter.
Simultaneously Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi juxtapose the starkly urban and run-of-the-mill town that could be set anywhere from Japan to smaller locations in America with the imposing beauty of the specific natural backdrop. Cinematographer Yoshio Kitagawa makes the distant mountains and the abundance of woodland vivid and dominant onscreen, as humanity responds to and fits around the cycles of nature.
Like the two strangers who are briefly filmed in their cramped office, the allure of this community slowly takes hold of the audiences as well, and despite a rather unnecessarily dramatic finale that creates an ambiguous final message, Evil Does Not Exist is a finely calibrated study of collective responsibility for the environment and the individual promise of release that it brings.
Evil Does Not Exist is in UK and Irish Cinemas from 5 April.
