It isn’t very often that we find a filmmaker whose entire purpose seems to be to redefine the margins of what cinema can be and represent. Ryūsuke Hamaguchi has been working for the better part of a decade (with films like Asako I & II and the arthouse masterpiece Happy Hour drawing a small but dedicated group of supportive viewers), but it seems like it has only been in the last few years, after the almost simultaneous releases of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Drive My Car that he seemed to finally be receiving the kind of attention he deserves, and which immediately established him as someone whose future work was going to be highly anticipated. His follow-up to the exceptional success of Drive My Car was always going to be fascinating, so it only stands to reason that he would essentially go in quite a different direction, rather than resting on his laurels. Evil Does Not Exist (Japanese: 悪は存在しない) is an extraordinarily ambitious film, albeit not the kind that makes its audacity clear from the outset. Conceived initially as a more freeform art project in collaboration with composer Eiko Ishibashi, the film focuses on a small community a few hundred miles outside of Tokyo as they deal with the encroaching danger of capitalism as it gradually descends on their idyllic hamlet in the form of a company that intends to transform a section of the natural landscape into a luxury camping ground. Their belief that this will bring more cash flow to the community proves to be futile when it becomes clear that the locals are vehemently against any kind of development, valuing the natural surroundings more than any economic boost that can come from such an endeavour. A very strange but deeply hypnotic film that represents yet another new chapter in Hamaguchi’s already fascinating career, Evil Does Not Exist is an immense achievement, the kind that is both bewildering and compelling, which is almost exactly what we would expect from one of the most wonderfully enigmatic filmmakers currently working.

One of the great merits of Hamaguchi as a director is that he embodies the spirit of reasonable mystery – he crafts his films to be deeply poetic social and cultural statements, and their true meaning can be decoded simply through sitting with the material and pondering it, or at least as close of an approximation to their intended meaning since a lot of his stories rely on the individual interpretation we each bring when watching one of his films. Evil Does Not Exist certainly does exemplify this same principle, albeit in a very different and far more complex way. Not originally intended as a feature film, but rather as something shorter and more bespoke that he subsequently expanded, the film represents something quite mysterious but not any less curious. We don’t quite grasp the nature of what this film intends to convey until midway through – and even then, it’s still a matter of working our way through the ambiguities to try and make sense of the more off-kilter narrative, which appears straightforward in theory, but is working its way to something much deeper and slightly more insidious, which is all part of the immense appeal that goes into the creation of the story. Knowing exactly what Evil Does Not Exist is trying to say is not an easy endeavour – on the surface, it seems to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of capitalism and the constant battle between tradition and modernity, which is reflected in the tug-of-war between the corporate representatives of this faceless company, and the locals as they engage in a spirited and slightly tense battle of wits, mostly shown in the centrepiece segment, a lengthy town hall in which the two sides debate and argue over the merits and shortcomings of a plan that none of them finds particularly worthwhile. Yet, this is only one layer of the film, and the director has several fascinating ideas that he weaves into the fabric of this film, patiently allowing the viewer to engage with what we see on screen and forming our interpretation, in which the truly fascinating conversations will inevitably be formed.

A quality that we find in most of his work, including in Evil Does Not Exist, is Hamaguchi’s steadfast appreciation and fascination with humanity as a concept. He’s an optimistic filmmaker, but not a delusional one, and his films often seem to exist with the express purpose of showing a very particular side of the human condition in as authentic a way as possible. This film in particular is his most communal film – we believe it to be focusing on Takumi and his daughter, but this gradually proves to be only partially true, as they are instead just one of a few characters whose perspectives will be explored throughout this film. The fluidity with which the director moves through the different viewpoints is fascinating. Everyone is given something to do, and their focus is more or less equal in one way or another, which removes the very concept of a binary between good and evil, and instead proves that our understanding of a concept can change with something as simple as a shift in perspective. The heartless corporate villains are humanized within a few moments when we come to learn that they are just pawns that exist to do the bidding of a company that employs them for the express purpose of delivering bad news to those who aren’t prepared to hear it. Conversely, the dedicated and soft-spoken father proves to be a vengeful soul who carries the rage of generations of people who yearned for a simple life and as a result had to fight the winds of progress, and the unlucky people tasked with bringing it to their community. The film isn’t entirely character-based in the traditional sense, since we never quite get the chance to leap into the heads of these characters, but we do get to learn a lot about them, and much of that has to do with the exceptional performances from an ensemble cast that all deliver strong, poignant performances that are tender and personal, while also being profoundly complex in quite unexpected ways, which enriches a film that makes unique use of its characters.

Hamaguchi has been quite open about the fact that Evil Does Not Exist was intended as a silent short film before he decided to expand it and turn it into something longer. As a result, we start to see just how little this film depended on the writing (which is notable considering how much the director has made use of dialogue in previous films) and instead draws most of its brilliance from the visual and tonal elements. Many have labelled this as less of a film and more like a feature-length tone poem, which is as good a description as any, especially taking into account how much of this film is driven by the atmosphere. Therefore, a lot more credit needs to be given to the cinematography by Yoshio Kitagawa, as well as the work done by Ishibashi, whose score flows throughout the film. Evil Does Not Exist was designed as a collaboration between the director and the composer, and she almost functions as a co-author of the story, with her score guiding the story as much as the dialogue does, if not more so. We soon come to realize that the film is mainly a meditation on life and death in its various forms, as well as a socio-cultural statement on Japan and its difficult relationship between the past and present as it attempts to move forward into the future without entirely abandoning the traditions of the past, which can be a daunting process. Hamaguchi’s choice to focus less on offering discursive statements and clear conclusions, and to instead rely on the mood to tell the story, is incredible and genuinely interesting and makes this film far more captivating since we don’t quite know what to expect, and by the time we reach those climactic moments, which are ambigious to the point of being entirely abstract, we aren’t quite sure what anything in this film means, but it barely makes a difference considering the depth and nuance with which this story was being told, where the narrative doesn’t matter, and a story can be told through images and allusions more than any spoken words.

For years, filmmakers have been aiming to craft works that circumvent the traditional narrative structure. Usually, this is aligned with the desire to return cinema to the place where it originated, whereby words meant very little and instead, it was all about stirring a reaction through images and the different emotions they evoked. Interestingly, it took one of the greatest writers of the present generation to make a film that manages to tell a story where more emphasis was on the images and the mood they created than the dialogue. There is still a lot of conversation that goes on throughout Evil Does Not Exist, but it’s almost trivial and bland by design, showing the banality in everyday conversations that can sometimes conceal more insidious implications. Categorizing this film is about as difficult as understanding what those haunting final moments represent, and it exists somewhere between character-based drama and psychological thriller, the gentle but foreboding score implying there’s something deeper beneath the surface, which is conveyed through the stunningly beautiful images that are composed with the same attention to detail. It’s a moody, complex drama with many fascinating ideas. While very few of them are developed to the point where they are entirely comprehensible, the experience of being immersed in this peculiar, almost sinister version of the world that Hamaguchi is intent on exploring creates such a vibrant, complex depiction of society, something that he still looks at with compassion, but frequently aims to remind us is not nearly as placid as it may appear. Evil Does Not Exist a fascinating entry into the director’s stellar career. While it may take a lot of work to fully comprehend what this film is aiming to convey (and where the solutions are almost entirely ambigious), the experience is still extraordinary and leads to something much more compelling than we may have initially expected based on a cursory glance.