Hamaguchi Ryûsuke is the second contemporary Japanese film director, after Kore-eda Hirokazu, to gain a significant profile in North America and Europe as well as in East Asia. But his emergence has been rapid in the last few years given that he has been an active filmmaker since the early 2000s. His reputation outside Japan rests on Drive My Car (Japan 2021), which won the ‘Best International Feature Film’ Oscar in 2022 and the (limited) distribution of his three previous films Happy Hour (Japan 2015), Asako I & II (Japan-France 2018) and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Japan 2021). His new film was released in the UK in April this year by the small independent distributor Modern Films and I was unable to see it in cinemas locally. I finally caught it as a rental on Apple TV. I watched it twice, the second time with the volume raised because the soundtrack is a major element of the film. I think that watching it via a computer or TV needs a decent home sound system and I do wish I had seen it in a cinema.

My post on Drive My Car includes some background on the director and there is a direct link between this new film and the 2021 title. It appears that the genesis of this new film was an agreement to make a medium length film to accompany a live performance by music composer Ishibashi Eiko and her band on tour in different parts of Japan. The subsequent silent film, Gift was released in Japan in 2023. Some background on Ishibashi and her music is given in this interesting Guardian piece by Ben Beaumont-Thomas from April 2024. It appears that part way through making Gift, Hamaguchi decided to make Evil Does Not Exist and decided to cast his driver Omika Hitoshi in the central role. (Omika had previously been production manager for Hamaguchi on Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy.) The new film would have music by Ishibashi and would be shot by the same cinematographer as Gift, Kitagawa Yoshio. It would also, following Drive My Car, include several extended dialogue sequences set in the confines of a car. Many of the cast appear to be ‘non-professionals’ or actors with limited experience.

The opening shot of the film

Outline (no spoilers)

The film is set in Winter in the mountains some two to three hours drive from Tokyo – the actual location shoot appears to have been in Nagano Prefecture in Central Honshu. Omika plays Takumi, seen chopping wood outside his house in the forest and then collecting water from a stream that will be used by a local noodle restaurant. Later he meets his daughter, 8 year-old Hana who has made her own way home from school. In the evening Takumi and Hana have a meal with other villagers at the home of the village headman. They learn that a Tokyo company aims to create a glamping site in the forest and that a public meeting is to happen soon. At the meeting hosted by PR personnel, villagers raise questions and doubts about the proposal. Back in Tokyo, the two PR people, Takahashi and Mayuzumi, report back to their client by video link. The developer rebuffs the villagers’ concerns and sends the PR couple back to the village to get round the problems with a plan to engage Takumi with a job offer. The PR couple both have misgivings but meet Takumi for lunch at the noodles restaurant. Later that afternoon Hana goes missing. The woman, Mayuzumi, stays at Takumi’s house, but Takahashi goes with Takumi as a search for Hana begins. The ending of the film is ‘open’.

Hana is very active in the narrative, but I don’t think she speaks.

Commentary

As the synopsis suggests there is little ‘plot’ to the film. The one conventional scene is the village meeting where all of the characters are present. Both Hagamuchi and Ishibashi have spoken about Jean-Luc Godard as a reference of some kind (Godard died in September 2022, when presumably this film was in preparation). I didn’t think about Godard as I watched the film but thinking back there is a dramatic cut on the soundtrack from Ishibashi’s wonderful score to silence and then the natural sounds of the forest even though the visuals don’t change in quite the same way. I think it was in Une femme est une femme (1961) that Godard highlighted the conventional continuity function of the soundtrack with a similar cut. But perhaps the reference is simply to the term ‘experimental’ which both Hamaguchi and Ishibashi (who is co-credited with the story idea) have used to describe the film.

The PR couple from Tokyo arrive to find Takumi chopping wood

One way into the film is to think of some of the binaries involved in its narrative construction. The most obvious is the natural world v. the commercial leisureworld of the glamping site. This could also be expressed as country v. city or simply rural v. urban. I’ve also seen nature v. capitalism. That’s a bit naive I think since in most parts of the world the beautiful landscapes of tourist areas like this one are the result of hundreds of years of human activity both pre- and post-capitalism as well as the hundred to two hundred years of capitalist expansion. Perhaps we should start instead with that title. ‘Evil Does Not Exist’ might be taken to be a humanist statement – everyone is capable of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ actions. That’s true of villagers in the mountains just as it’s true of business people in the cities. Those of certain religious faiths will aver that there is evil in the world perhaps, but I’m not sure that’s true for most Japanese. I think that the problem for audiences is that Hamaguchi wants them to work for meanings. Just one example might be the question of Hana’s mother. The only clue we have is that we see Takumi looking at piano keys and we glimpse a photo of a woman and small child on top of the piano. Ishibashi’s score at this point seems like a requiem. To avoid spoilers there are other issues in the plotting that I haven’t mentioned but even considering these Hamaguchi is not going to provide any definitive ‘answers’ to the enigma he creates.

Takumi and Hana in the forest. She learns from her father how to identify tree species.

The film is very beautiful in its depiction of the forest and it opens with an audacious tracking shot looking up at the tree cover. This is followed by the two sequences of Takumi chopping wood and collecting water that seem to have enraged some audience members who don’t seem to have ever seen an art film or really thought about the experience of being a spectator. I was at this point thinking about the film The Zen Diary (Japan 2022) that I saw earlier this year. That’s a very different film but it too conveys that sense of place that is so important culturally in Japan. The other feeling I had was related to Takumi’s ‘presence’. At one point I began to think of Charles Bronson, who in various roles has a calm or stillness but also suggests that there is something underneath that is very substantial and even possibly violent if roused. Omika rarely smiles  and it would be interesting to compare his demeanour in various scenes, for instance his work in the forest and the dialogue between him and Takahashi in the car as they begin the search for Hana.

I will be intrigued to look at the Blu-ray which will presumably appear in the UK at some point (it’s out in the US). At the moment it appears to be only available to stream in the UK on Apple, Amazon or Sky. I’ve noted that a small part of the audience dismisses the film because it does not meet their expectations, but its critical rating is high. I think that will please Hamaguchi in that he has spoken about being somewhat overwhelmed by the festival circus that followed the success of Drive My Car and deliberately set out to make an experimental film. It won prizes nevertheless, including the Grand Jury prize at Venice in 2023. Note that the film is presented in 1.66:1, possibly a Godardian decision?