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Evil Does Not Exist is a Formidable Conservationist Warning

Still one of the most potent movies ever made on man’s infringement on nature is Bambi. That may sound quaint to say about an old Disney cartoon, but amidst all its cuteness and whimsy and beautiful cel animation, there’s such a revulsion it has for the destructive impact of humanity on pastoral nature; and of a kind that has rarely been seen even in movies since that aim at similar themes. Bambi, and specifically the critical moment of Bambi, is evoked rather starkly in one of the last scenes of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s conservationist drama Evil Does Not Exist. And though it is wrapped up in a context of some mystique, the allusion is very intentional, the anger just as stark.
Hamaguchi’s follow-up to his quiet masterpiece Drive My Car was initially meant to be a short film without dialogue -though it’s no surprise that the man who made a five-hour movie about the lives of four middle-class women in Kobe would find himself stretching the project out until it became a feature. And it is very much a movie designed to both express a specific frustration and mournfully observe a certain tranquil ethos he finds immensely important. And yet he doesn’t do so with profoundly rendered images of beauty -he keeps it mellow and naturalistic, blatant and objective. And patient. With Hamaguchi, everything is patient.
The movie is set in a small woodland village in northern Japan, a community that exists alongside and in reverence to the natural habitat and its wildlife and apart from the encroachment of industrial civilization. A particular resident, Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) ventures into the forest regularly to forage, collect water, and essentially live off the land with his daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa). The peace is interrupted however by developers looking to build the area into a glamping site, the repercussions of which could be devastating for the ecosystem.
Glamping, or “glamourous camping” is a modern trend of privileged eco-tourism I’m surprised hasn’t come up more in discussions of capitalist environmental disregard. It has become a rising industry targeting specifically younger demographics wanting to ostensibly experience nature, but in the luxury of all their creature comforts. It’s a fairly cynical enterprise on the sides of both the people marketing it and those partaking in it. And Hamaguchi certainly has little sympathy for it in the ways he portrays its spokespeople as uninformed at best, callous at worst, towards the realities of its communal and environmental impact. A centrepiece of the movie is a long consultation with the townsfolk that the man in charge of the operation admits afterwards is just for the P.R. The representatives are clearly quite ignorant to the needs of the area that its locals bring up sternly -particularly a septic tank that will leak into the village and pollute the site. And Takumi is one of the most informed residents. It's worth noting the contrast between Takumi in his humble, practically-oriented winter coat and toque at this conference and the company boss in his slick suit speaking to his underlings on video chat behind the wheel of a fancy car. With this kind of topic, Hamaguchi leaves no room for subtlety.
But those middle-folk he has some sympathy towards. Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) have a degree of self-awareness. And being in this place, hearing from these people has an effect on their attitude towards the endeavour -in contrast to their boss who seems to have no interest in actually visiting this pristine environment he is promoting. In a highly grim and cynical movie, the hope in human nature represented by them is something to cling on to. Still, even as they grow more sympathetic to the villagers’ views they are required to hire Takumi as a caretaker and bring him on side to better persuade the community.
In all of this, Hamaguchi maintains his precision direction and intensely gradual pace. There are only a handful of scenes in this movie it seems, but each of them go on for quite some time. The early portion establishes well the peace of the environment as Takumi and Hana quietly interact with it. It’s fitting that the company seeks to make Takumi their site caretaker when that is essentially his vocation for the forest. Hamaguchi keeps the camera at some distance from him through much of these compositions and hypnotic long takes, intentionally dwarfing him against nature -in some instances forcing him to be its backdrop instead of the usual relationship to the contrary. This patience extends  to the scenes of the people as well -the P.R. session pretty much playing out uncut as each concern is heard and responded to -with each embarrassment for the capitalist stooges setting in more and more. It’s a very simple tact that gives the whole movie a slightly discomforting observational outlook for the audience. Indeed there is an eeriness relayed through this method, especially the more inevitable the development becomes.
The implicit power of the natural world is highly stressed, especially in the last act when a mystery brings the community together and casts the open world around them in greater darkness. Beyond its devices of sustained naturalism, is a grandiosity in the movie’s attitude towards its virtues. There is a price, it is suggested, for interfering with this land, importing cynical human capitalism to it -and even for Takumi more directly, for becoming a collaborator to it. All through the movie, Hamaguchi illustrates the relationship between the people and the forest as a balance, a disruption in which is tantamount to sacrilege. The film’s moodiness becomes more and more claustrophobic as it reaches its end point and when it gets there it fully adopts a dreamlike tenor. Past and present exist simultaneously as the ultimate point is inferred rather than shown outright. But its impact couldn’t be more blunt, and Hamaguchi ends the film by bleakly reasserting the dominance of nature in the face of efforts to infringe upon it.
This movie’s title is incredibly compelling: Evil Does Not Exist. But Hamaguchi’s argument really seems to be that it does -the glamping development is portrayed as an insidious blight on a pristine habitat and its soulful villagers. It is a film that presents the battle between the natural world and modern industry in very harsh and binary terms. Is the statement ironic, or intentionally naive? Or could it be that the concept itself is too rudimentary to apply to something so serious and existential? Something even grimmer is suggested by this, that it’s not evil but sheer apathy towards nature that motivates such violations. That seems to be in line with the general mood that Hamaguchi leaves you with in this quietly stirring film with disarmingly sharp convictions -one of the most subtly visceral of its kind.

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