Touchstone: Evil Does Not Exist
Note on Touchstones: Both Issue III and this unseasonably hot summer are well underway and we’ve been seeing traces of our themes everywhere. As we begin to immerse ourselves in the cool waters of your submissions, we thought we’d delve into the touchstones that emulate Issue III’s guiding themes of Heritage, Cultural Ecology, and Art.
Last week, I stumbled into Film Forum for an unlikely double feature: John Waters’ Polyester and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist. I’ll hold onto my review of Polyester for another day (although we might need to add an Odorama budget to our next grant proposal). Instead, I’d like to point you towards Evil Does Not Exist, a delicately rendered film about what we owe the earth and each other.
Evil Does Not Exist takes place in Mizubiki Village, close-knit woodland community within driving distance of Tokyo. Its earliest images depict quiet acts of knowledge-as-stewardship: a man chopping wood with an artfulness that precludes violence, a chef hand-picking wild wasabi to include in that night’s dinner, a father and daughter naming each tree they pass on their walk home from school.
This practiced equilibrium comes under threat when a Tokyo-based talent agency announces its plans to build a glamping village upstream of Mizubiki. In a town hall meeting, executives frame the project as an opportunity for city dwellers to experience a comfortable escape to nature. Mizubiki’s residents respond, at first with confusion and then with leveled anger, with concerns that the project will irreversibly pollute the town’s water supply. The quiet force of Evil Does Not Exist flows forth from this confrontation with all the lucidity of a mountain stream.
While many films exploring conflicts between capitalist extraction and ecological wellbeing pack their hardest punches in the boardroom and courtroom, Evil Does Not Exist draws its conflicts down to earth. Hamaguchi often positions the camera at ground level, focusing on the latticework of tree branches or the loping paths of birds and leaves. In this way, Hamaguchi reminds us that what anthropologist Anna L. Tsing would call ‘the art of noticing’ goes both ways. Here, the earth observes and condemns humans just as humans observe and condemn the earth. If you’re planning to engage with our third issue in any capacity, this understanding of earth-as-interlocutor will surely reappear time and time again.