Takumi, a taciturn widower, lives in the mountains with his daughter Hana, whom he cherishes. However, their peaceful existence is undermined by the desire of a company to transform the surrounding forest into a “glamping” site, a form of high-end camping. Takahashi and Mayuzumi, two employees of a public relations firm, have the thankless task of making this polluting and destructive project acceptable in the eyes of a rightly hostile population. Against a backdrop of violated nature, destinies intersect… But one day, little Hana disappears. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the International Critics Prize in Venice, Evil does not exist marks the return of Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, two years after his Oscar for best international film for Drive My Car (Or Drive my tank). We spoke to him exclusively.
“We know that humans are capable of committing evil, but we never attribute evil intentions to nature, even when it is ruthless. Nature Eastquite simply,” notes the Japanese filmmaker, joined by videoconference, about the title of his most recent film.
It was during a visit to the countryside with her friend and collaborator Eiko Ishibashi, singer-songwriter behind the music of Drive My Car and from this film, that the project began to germinate in the mind of Ryūsuke Hamaguchi (Asako I & II, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy).
“It’s hard to explain, because it’s a bit abstract, but intuitively I understood that Eiko’s music and the notion of nature would both harmonize well. Eiko’s music is dense and complex; it has a multitude of layers of meaning and is devoid of a clear purpose, in addition to lending itself to several interpretations. All these characteristics also exist in nature, nature where Eiko creates her music… In short, this parallel between Eiko’s music and nature seemed self-evident to me and inspired me a lot. »
Beyond intentions
Inspired by what? An unpredictable scenario which announces an environmentalist comment, but leads to existentialist considerations; a story which is bathed in harsh realism, then takes a tangent as unusual as it is poetic. Certain animals, like these graceful deer, end up acquiring a totemic symbolism…
“As soon as I decided to make nature the main theme of the film, I asked myself how to construct a story that would be organic,” says the director. I did a lot of research, and the story took shape like that, based on real issues. I absolutely had no intention of making a political film, or a spiritual film, or a message film… I was inspired by events that were really happening in this sector. As for the deer, they were there: we literally came across them. These animals being part of the daily life of the place, I integrated them, because it seemed natural to me. That said, there is undeniably a political dimension in the relationship that humans have with nature, just as there is undeniably a spiritual dimension between humans and nature. Except that it doesn’t come from me or my intentions: it’s inherent. »
By his own admission, with Evil does not exist, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi steps out of what he calls his “comfort zone”. Namely: an urban narrative framework.
“I live in the city and don’t like to move too far from it. It is a very constructed, marked and populated environment, where it is easy for me to imagine and then stage chance encounters and coincidences. The nature where Eiko lives is the complete opposite of that, and in order to imagine plausible coincidences in this context, an unconstructed, unmarked and sparsely populated context, I had to set benchmarks. I therefore identified places and natural elements, and made patterns of them, like anchor points to which to anchor these coincidences. »
Coincidences which, in his films, come to form a plot.
A moment of existence
In the same way that the story does not follow an expected curve, the characters, after summary, even misleading, first impressions, seem to come alive with their own will.
“A rule that I impose on myself, regarding my characters, is that they must never be in the service of the story. Rather, they must exist outside of it, have their own life. The idea is that within the framework of the film we have the impression that the camera is simply capturing a moment of their existence, a piece of their life. This means that the characters do not arrive all at once in the story, but on the contrary are revealed gradually, through their actions and their decisions, which sometimes prove surprising, even for me. This approach, basically, corresponds to my experience of the world, that is to say, to what happens when I meet people: getting to know a person is gradual. I try to translate that into my writing. »
However “surprising” they may be, these “actions” and “decisions” always ring true, dramatically speaking. Indeed, each time Takumi, Hana, Takahashi or Mayuzumi makes an unexpected confidence or adopts behavior opposite to that anticipated, it is as if an immutable force imprinted on the narrative unfolding a logic from the depths of the ages.
“Sometimes my characters act in ways they don’t understand, and for reasons beyond their control. I think that, too, corresponds to my vision of the world. Unexpected events happen all the time in real life, and I frequently find myself doing things that I can’t explain, or that I never thought I would do. »
For example: shooting a film in magnificently untamed nature, him, the inveterate city dweller.
The film Evil does not exist hits theaters on May 17.