Evil Does Not Exist

Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki, a village outside Tokyo. Takumi cuts wood, carries water and spends most of the day in the forest. A company wants to build a glamping site in the village and holds an information meeting. The villagers ask one technical question: if the septic tank goes in the wrong place, will the water source below be contaminated. The two representatives the company has sent are in no position to answer it. From there the film goes somewhere that connects to nothing. Ryusuke Hamaguchi directed. Its starting point was unusual: the project was first conceived as a short visual piece to accompany the music of the composer Eiko Ishibashi, who had also scored Hamaguchi's Drive My Car. He began shooting images to go with music without words, and the work grew into a feature. It won the Silver Lion, the Grand Jury Prize, at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Nothing is resolved at the end. Hamaguchi cuts precisely where no resolution is possible and leaves the viewer having to defend their own reading. That was the thing most argued about on the way out of screenings. Who it is for: viewers who like slow films that surrender to the rhythm of a place, and Hamaguchi. Who it is not for: anyone wanting an explanation. The last five minutes are deliberately left open and many people meet it with anger.