Ryusuke Hamaguchi has safely positioned himself as one of most exciting Japanese directors alive. He first gained international recognition for Happy Hour (2015), Asako I & II (2018) and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021).

Yet, he truly cemented his status as one of contemporary Japanese cinema giants with Drive My Car (2021), which won him the award of Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards. His follow-up, Evil Does Not Exist, might be more intimate in nature, but did not fail to receive widespread critical acclaim and earning many awards like the Grand Jury Prize at the 80th Venice International Film Festival and the Best Film award at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival (General-note 1).

The title of Hamaguchi’s narrative will puzzle quite a few people, especially those knowledgeable about Freudian psychoanalysis. How can one argue that evil does not exist? Our life, conscious and unconscious, is full of transgressive desires, violent fantasies and self-destructive tendencies – the death drive lingers in all of us. Our symptoms, to put it in a somewhat overly simplified manner, are expressions of the conflict between the ‘evil’ impulses within ourselves and the fiction of societal harmony we strive to insert ourselves in. So, how does Hamaguchi wants the spectator understand this, at least from a Freudian perspective, controversial title?

The narrative of Evil Does not Exist starts, de facto, with the introduction that the villagers of Harasawa have been approached by an entertainment Agency called Playmode to construct a luxurious glamping site on higher ground in the nearby forest. Tatsu (Yûto Torii) informs Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), Kazuo (Hiroyuki Miura), and Mayor Suruga (Tajiro Tamura) that the company is merely targeted pandemic subsidies, yet the mayor states that he wants to hear what they have to say.

During the presentation of the project in the community centre, Playmode’s Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and his partner Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) get attacked by barrage of critical questions concerning the place of the septic tank and the use of bonfires on the site. Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), Takumi’s daughter, on the other hand, wanders off to explore the surrounding nature.

With Evil Does Not Exist, Hamaguchi first and foremost delivers a drama of intentions, of what subjects aim to keep hidden behind their well-chosen and appeasing signifiers. Hamaguchi constructs an entire narrative around the idea – an idea emphasized by the still serene natural scenery – that deception is part and parcel to the very act of verbalising signifiers.

Yet, Hamaguchi’s film is not a tale of self-deception – the lies we tell ourselves and stabilize our ego, but the deception that subjects are forced to commit to heed the demands of the capitalistic discourse they are subscribed to. Tatsu perceives very well that behind Takahashi’s promotional talk of revitalizing the area with a glamping site – boosting local economy – lies an unspoken thirst for profit – not only to profit from the glamping boom, but also from the serene nature and thus, indirectly, from the local population. 

The signs of this thirst echoes within two aspects of Takahashi’s sales-pitch – i.e. the short time before construction starts and the absence of the company’s president and the glamping consultant at the presentation. Partly due to this, some of the concerned villagers have no problem in perforating the promotional talk – they expose the problematic placement of the septic tank and the possible effects of polluting spring water and confront the company’s representatives with the increased risk of wildfires.     

Returning to the title, we can finally offer our interpretation. Hamaguchi’s narrative, first and foremost, evokes that evil does not exist at the level of the (natural) Real (see also below). The rhythm of the instincts and the concatenation of natural disasters introduce violence in the cycle of nature, yet this violence lies beyond any moral system, beyond any concatenation of signifiers.   

Secondly, the narrative signals that evil does not exist at the level of the symbolic. The treasure cove of signifiers (i.e. all the combinations of letters or ideograms), mutely waiting to be utilized by someone’s vocal cords, might offer morality its own foundations, but the signifier and the morpheme, as such, lie beyond the morality.      

However, when a subject, animated by his own real, wields the symbolic to produce meaning, the possibility of producing evil becomes a reality. Evil necessitates meaning, needs the presence of the imaginary, as pinched between and supported by the real and the symbolic. It is, in this sense, that subjects who inscribe themselves in certain symbolic structures, i.e. the capitalistic dynamic of seeking (meaning in) profit, are gently forced to talk with twisted tongues and act in service of evil. Yet, that does not mean that they serve this discourse and its effects of meaning willingly. Horiguchi softly refuses the blind pursuit of profit and hopes to fully appease the worries of the local community. Takahashi, on the other hand, is silently frustrated about being forced to do something unrelated to showbiz and realizes he is looking for a way out.

One of the most important questions Hamaguchi poses to the spectator concerns how the subject choses to give meaning to his ego, on which discourse he takes to frame and orient his speech and acts. Does one keep on serving capitalistic evil – the calculations of profit – or gamble on embracing the gentle balance of human connections and natural rhythms? This question ultimately culminates, within the narrative, into a different evocatively-posed question: Is there a beyond-morality for certain violent acts or not (Narra-note 1 [spoiler])?            

The imagery utilized within title sequence might be simple in its setup, but Hamaguchi’s serene and measured framing of the crown of the trees offers a poetic interplay of ever-shifting compositional lines that is not only truly mesmerizing, but highly mediative as well. Without knowing anything about the film – except for its title, the spectator cannot but feel intrigued.

In his visual composition, Hamaguchi continually seeks to emphasize the serene stillness of the natural environment, for example by utilizing static shots that emphasize the surrounding calmness and by turning silence into a tangible presence to evocatively signals the environmental equilibrium. Hamaguchi also impresses the spectator with some truly exceptional tracking shots, moments of serene beauty evoking the same mundane stillness.  

At the same time, the same compositional choices allow the director to show that what ripples the environmental equilibrium is, first and foremost, the human subject – Hana walking through the still forest, imprinting her presence in the snow; Takumi slicing and cutting wood, creating echoes that ripple that silence that reigns within the forest, an exchange of signifiers between Takumi and Kazuo, Takumi and Kazuo eating wild wasabi, … etc. However, while these acts must be considered as intrusions – the minimal violence the human subject enacts by being alive, they remain respectful to the cycle of nature, striking a precarious balance between nature and culture.

At certain moments in the narrative, shaky framing comes to disturb the restrained nature of the composition. These seemingly random disturbances have, by virtue of the signifier ‘evil’ in the title of the narrative, a strangely foreboding quality. Music is sparsely utilized throughout the narrative. Yet, whenever the unintrusive austere musical pieces accompany certain narrative moments, they sort the same effect as the sudden compositional shifts to shakiness: infuse a certain indeterminate disquietude within the unfolding of the narrative. It is, in this sense, that one must consider the serene nature Hamaguchi so elegantly emphasizes in his composition as a frame upon which the human drama will explode.             

With Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Evil Does Not Exist offers a highly meditative exploration of the position of violence within the natural real and the human symbolic. He proves himself to be a master of composition, delivering evocative poetry with his images, and a refined wielder of the signifier, orchestrating a finale that will not only shock, but demand the spectator’s interpretation. Highly recommended.     

Notes

General-note 1: While Evil Does Not Exist premiered at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival, its theatrical release was in 2024.

Structure-note 1: Hamaguchi’s narrative unfolds chronologically, but also plays smartly with asynchronous associations and its function in exposing meaning. There are many moments in the narrative where certain acts or events only receive their full meaning by an association with a signifier expressed or introduced later or earlier in the narrative.

Narra-note 1: The spectator’s interpretation of the ending of Evil Does not Exist depend on whether he qualifies the violent act as following the rhythm of the natural Real – i.e. the wounded deer and the trust for self-preservation – or being strictly determined by the law, the symbolic calculation infusing moral meaning to our acts – violence as a mere transgression. Or to put it differently, do we consider the final act of violence to be beyond meaning or embedded by the meaning produced by the societal system, the Other?  

However, from a psychoanalytic perspective, Hamaguchi offers the spectator a false choice. What is easily forgotten is the presence of language as such, of the fact that the subject who commit the act of violence cannot stop being a speaking being. The perpretator can only metaphorically accede to the logic of the wounded deer that lies beyond moral categories – he can never be the deer, and cannot avoid the consequences – subjective and societal – of the moral field, the field supported by speech and the letter.  His act of violence might not follow the logic of evil, but his transgression cannot but be inscribed and registered in the societal field.    

Sound-note 1: Hamaguchi utilizes the aural stillness of the natural environment to accentuate the sounds of human intrusion.

Cine-note 1: For his composition, Hamaguchi relies mainly on static shots, long takes and slow dynamic movement.