The winter sky in the opening shot of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist is a brilliant white, seen through a tangle of spindly tree branches. Set against a radiant orchestral score, the scene looks sublime. But then a dissonant note is heard in the music. Then another. Not everything is as it seems.
“I started from a place of not knowing anything,” Hamaguchi says of his new film, which sets up a paradisal image of nature to then unsettle it. He speaks with a humility that belies his standing as one of Japan’s most celebrated auteurs. It was late 2021, he recalls; his previous film, Drive My Car, had been released (and would soon be the surprise hit of awards season, walking away with the Oscar for best international feature film). The musician Eiko Ishibashi, who scored Drive My Car, asked the director if he could provide background visuals for her tour. Hamaguchi, a longtime city-dweller, visited her at her studio in the countryside. Inspiration struck as he listened to her music against the sweeping landscapes.
