‘Drive My Car’ director Ryusuke Hamaguchi follows his Oscar-winning film with an eco-drama exploring the clash between nature and capitalism.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 award-winning drama “Drive My Car” was a long (179 minutes), verbose, literary affair about a theater director whose wife had died who then embarked on directing a multilingual, multiethnic production of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” The film won many accolades, including the best international feature film Academy Award.
Hamaguchi’s follow-up effort, the award-winning “Evil Does Not Exist,” like Wim Wenders’ recent, wonderful, Tokyo-set “Perfect Days,” began as a short film and grew into a 106-minute portrait of a small, remote Japanese community (pop. 6,000) upended when a talent agency decides to open a “glamping” facility in nearby mountainous woods, endangering, among other things, the forest and the community’s pure and natural water supply, a symbol of the community itself.
The action starts with a long, lyrical tracking shot by Yoshio Kitigawa (Hamaguchi’s “Happy Hour”) looking up at the overcast sky through the region’s trees while we listen to the beautiful, muted score of co-writer Eiko Ishibashi (“Drive My Car”). We see a little girl named Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) who walks home through the woods because her “jack-of-all-trades” father is chronically late picking her up from school. She is a modern-day Little Red Riding Hood in blue. Hana sometimes spies a deer in the woods. We hear the not-so-distant gunshot of hunters, a harbinger of dangers. When her father catches up with her in the woods, they identify the trees they pass on their way home. Among the “trades” Hana’s father, Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) plies, is a woodcutter with a maul that he wields with rigor and samurai-like skill, and we watch him at work in another one of the film’s rapturous passages.
Another village ritual is collecting water from a nearby mountain stream. Takumi helps a friend with this task and notices a patch of wild wasabi, a traditional but hard-to-come-by ingredient in udon soup. One of the villagers’ greatest concerns is that a septic tank the talent agency plans to build will contaminate the village water supply. “Water flows downward” is the village chief’s simple refrain.
Ishibashi’s score has a way of phasing in and out, introducing a theme, or bidding one farewell. Among the artifacts we find in the woods is a tragic one: a “gut-shot fawn” in almost skeletal condition. It looks like one of those demonic ghost-animals out of Japanese myth. At a community center, villagers meet with two representatives of the talent agency. The villagers air their concerns, including rules regarding campfires in the “dry and windy” mountains, where wildfires have been known to break out. However, the representatives have no experience or knowledge regarding the area’s ecosystem and no real authority. They’re a pair of flunkies, something they themselves realize.
In Hamaguchi’s work, ritual, hard work, zealous dedication, and art are sacred. Anything related to bureaucracy or capitalism is soul-deadening and a threat to the natural order. His art has an undercurrent of mysticism and religious fervor. “Evil Does Not Exist” is a miniature ecological fable. We are told that the region was colonized by World War II veterans from Tokyo eager to begin new lives as farmers and live close to nature. “Balance is key,” the old chieftain remarks.
The two talent agency reps, Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutami), are sent back by their obviously corrupt boss on a long “Drive My Car”-like journey to try to bribe Takumi with booze and the offer of a job. Instead, Takumi teaches the new convert, Takahashi, how to wield the maul.
Frankly, I found some of the final third-act shenanigans mystifying. But once again, Hamaguchi has made a film that evokes a stage play. This time, instead of “Uncle Vanya,” he reminds us of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 prophetic classic “An Enemy of the People,” another portrait of a small community facing ecological disaster and political corruption. “Water flows downward,” again.
‘Evil Does Not Exist’
Rating: Not rated; contains nothing objectionable.
Cast: Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Writer: Hamaguchi, Eiko Ishibashi
Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes
Where to Watch: Coolidge Corner Theater, Landmark Kendall Square
Grade: B+
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