ShareThe film “Evil Does Not Exist” by Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, known for the Oscar hit “Take the Wheel of My Car,” has been released in Russian cinemas. Fontanka has already assessed the film, which received the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and placed it in the context of cinema history.
Not so far from Tokyo there is a corner untouched by civilization, where only 6,000 people live, who have built a kind of symbiosis with nature. Simple wooden houses, for heating – stoves, spring water, deer, pheasants and wild wasabi – here time seems to have stood still. A rarity in tiny, mountainous Japan, where there is very little space. One of the inhabitants of this Eden is the woodcutter Takumi, who lives here with his little daughter Hannah. Takumi is a widower: something happened to Hannah’s mom, we don’t know what. But father and daughter find solace in the company of each other and the beautiful forest in which their grief dissolved.
Of course, such an idyll could not last long. A capital businessman has his eye on this tasty piece of land and wants to build a fashionable glamping site here, that is, a tent camp with a lot of amenities. But he cannot simply start construction: the law requires at least minimal discussion with local residents. So soon the lives of Takumi and Hanna will change.
Author: youtube.com/ExponentaFilm
Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s biggest name in 2021 was when he won an Oscar for his previous feature, Take the Wheel of My Car, based on a story by Haruki Murakami, a slow, poetic sketch about a director directing Chekhov. Chekhovian, full of unspoken drama. But then Hamaguchi seemed to have shut down Chekhov and reached the Soviet village writers. No, in fact: all this endless peering into the branches with meaning, that quiet wisdom that (of course) fills the villagers, is not evil, but that fussy soullessness that covers the city, that bitter pessimism that dooms all this natural eternity to a quick end – it seems that this is not a Japanese film based on the original script, but an adaptation of Valentin Rasputin’s “Farewell to Matera”.
So the developer’s agents come to the village and have an ostentatious discussion with the locals. They talk about wild deer, whose habitat may be affected, and about wells that will inevitably be contaminated by runoff from glamping. The politeness of the agents is not exactly mocking, but absolutely meaningless: “I am not authorized to discuss this.” “We will take your suggestion into account.” “I heard you.” You won’t surprise us like this, of course: you even involuntarily sympathize with the poor people, they are still trying to convey something and do not understand how fruitless it is. Evil may not exist, but there is something like it.
The rural ones, in turn, are also slightly grotesque: they speak not even like ordinary people, but like the Navi aliens from Avatar, connected to nature directly into the brain through their tails. “There must be a balance,” they say. “You don’t understand,” they say. “Water flows down,” they admonish.
According to Hamaguchi, in general all conversations are so much less important than the forest and deer that words inevitably turn out to be parodic and flat. Takumi and Hanna are mostly silent or talk about insignificant things, because they are full, and the main thing will never be expressed anyway. And the movement is unnecessary. You can look at a frame of a film for a minute and a half and wonder if the film has frozen. But no, these are just characters in no hurry. Takumi stands and looks into the distance. Evil does not exist, consciousness is empty, there is no death.
Of course, Hamaguchi’s film does not exist in a vacuum, but joins the tradition of “slow cinema”, which has been produced and talked about a lot over the past ten years – together with the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Hungarian Bela Tarr or the Mexican Carlos Reygadas. And there, too, they immerse themselves in nature, remain silent for hours or talk about trifles, keeping suffering in their hearts.
And just recently we saw a very similar case: in February, “Perfect Days” by Wim Wenders was released. True, he is not Japanese, but he made almost the same film on Japanese soil; let it not be about a village, or about a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. But even there – peering into the branches, the ability to live simply, wisely, look at the sky and pray to God, a hidden pain inside, about which not a word is said, and an emptiness in which any doubts subside.
It is also interesting that both films were born almost by accident, from sketches: Wenders was commissioned to advertise Tokyo toilets, and Hamaguchi created video art for the tour of the Japanese composer Eiko Ishibashi. That is, this was originally non-verbal art and, to be honest, not that desperately thoughtful. On the contrary, it was then that the plot and interspersed phrases were superimposed on the video sequence – and the impression was created that before us was a manifesto of quiet rural wisdom. If you know this, all the significance becomes slightly comical. And it’s good, maybe, because Hamaguchi’s serious solemnity sometimes makes you want to merge with nature and howl like a wolf.
Even the well-prepared, Zvyagintsev-like abrupt finale, which mixes up the cards, calls into question all the former greatness, and even the title of the film gives way to doubt – maybe evil does exist after all? – does not change the overall tone. Someone will want to drown in this emptiness, someone will try with their foot and move away. The void, most likely, will not notice this.
Matvey Pirogov, specially for Fontanka.ru
