“Evil Does Not Exist” Review: Deceptively Nuanced

With its contemplative pace, Evil Does Not Exist provides audiences a visually “simple” film with untraceable depth.

Evil Does Not Exist is the follow up to director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s pristine drama Drive My Car, and matches his previous outing in detail, subtlety, and melancholy. While nearly half the runtime of Drive My Car, Evil Does Not Exist similarly doesn’t just “manage” to satisfy its goal of examining, but never solving, the complicated relationship between humans and nature, but absolutely succeeds in performing a nuanced investigation on the dynamics between man and their lifeline. One, that even in the fictional land of cinema, humanity is still willing to hang up on.

With such an ambitious aim, Evil Does Not Exist is shockingly short, yet impressively contemplative. To feel as though a complete argument for multiple perspectives on a theme has been developed and tested within this runtime is thus a reflection of Hamaguche’s filmmaking mastery. The silent characters and uninterrupted camera disguise complicated dynamics of man vs nature. Hamaguche understands the power of an evocative image paired with silence or a fitting score. What is so impressive about Evil Does Not Exist is thus how much it manages to say with so little noise. Static long takes still reveal information when coming upon its fourth uninterrupted minute, and these durations never feel like a waste when capturing the beauty of nature, the dynamism of man, and the terror that belongs to each’s core.

“Balance is key,” according to our “lead” character, the rural mountain man and jack-of-all trades, Takumi. His seeming ambiguity speaks to the film’s unique pace and structure, and how these elements have an effect on the thematic success of the film overall. The man is of few words, much like the town he protects through maintenance of the land, and the film itself, which operates in stretches of uninterrupted tableaus and subtle filmmaking tools instead of dense conversation. The opening shot is minutes long, with a score that oscillates between awe-inspired and pensive to convey the hegemonic relationship between man and his surroundings. Eventually, the shot is revealed to be Hana’s POV, Takumi’s daughter and only living family, and thus, the dynamic score gains a new meaning. The music reflects the myriad of feelings a young child would feel in the woods: fear, awe, inspiration, terror. The film works in this revelatory manner, with seemingly innocuous elements being inscribed with depth from the smallest detail. Beyond the opening scene, the entire film flows in a tonal range of complete opposites, at times delivering comedic satire that turns depressing when one realizes just how, well, real that satire likely is. The underlining to “balance is key” is a give and take relationship, and when thrown out of balance, as it has been for the past century of human activity, our species’ idiocy is revealed.

While predominantly unconventional, Evil Does Not Exist manages to convey this idea through more expected moments as well, such as the scene that introduces the film’s main conflict. Playmode, a company planning to build a glamping site on the town, sends two representatives to “compromise” with the “locals.” While only being in this single room, with little more taking place than the brutal takedown of uneducated suits by disrespected townsfolk, it remains one of the film’s greatest scenes. Here, the film’s themes expand in scope and depth with the introduction of Playmode’s representatives, Takahashi and Mayuzumi. From these characters, the viewer gains outsider perspectives on an issue previously viewed from one, albeit still nuanced, side. Meaning, the film only expands its ideological and thematic aims ten fold hardly halfway through the film, and this is only achievable, again, by the incredibly efficient script that manages to balance perfectly paced irony and existential dread.

I put Takumi’s narrative role in quotes: “Lead.” That’s because Evil Does Not Exist is hardly concerned with storytelling boundaries. While the film may technically have the camera on Takumi long enough to classify him as “protagonist,” the most we learn of the man is that he is a father, and a single one at that. He helps the local udon shop gather water, and chops wood for eternity. He is representative of balance, but through it’s masterful and thorough examination of all of its characters, even Takumi’s perspective is interrogated by the film. Rather than focusing on a single character’s journey, Evil Does Not Exist clearly has the goal of studying a dynamic than telling a conventional story. This speaks to greater implications on narrative structure in a way that made me legitimately reconsider points of my own film criticism. For example, does every story need conflict? Does every story need a single character, facing trials and tribulations, then changing as a result, and being rewarded for doing so? Evil Does Not Exist, in my mind, is so successful in examining its subject through cinematic tools that it would be foolish to put it in any sort of box. Evil Does Not Exist would not have been better if there were an action scene, or a distinct arc for a single character. Rather, the film is an unabashed success precisely because it breaks convention. There is conflict, but the important element of that conflict isn’t its entertainment value, it’s what that conflict reveals and prods its audience to ask themselves. This is to say: one could find this movie a bore. The pace is that of a snail’s despite its shorter runtime, and one may be confused at its impossibly small yet overwhelmingly broad scope. However, it appears that closed minds are to be man’s ultimate downfall, and in the spirit of the film, I recommend remaining open to its message and execution. Maybe what was once terrifying could turn beautiful.