The welcoming rhythm of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest feature, Evil Does Not Exist, echoes an unbothered pulse from nature. In the first fifteen minutes, we watch Takumi, the local “odd-job man” played by Hitoshi Omika, chop wood and collect spring water for the local noodle shop in Mizubiki, a village outside of Tokyo. He tends in peace (so much that he forgets to pick up his daughter Hana at school — again), drifting with his surroundings. The screen is framed by the foliage of towering trees and filled by scattered leaves, reducing a human’s presence as much as possible.

It is an admittedly slow procedure, but those who might feel like they’ve stumbled into the meditative state of a Tsai Ming-liang film will soon recognize the rapture of Hamaguchi’s emotional composition at the film’s busiest scene: a town (so to speak) meeting. Mizubiki had been selected as the center of a newly constructed glamping site (a term that’s never been said so seriously in either fiction or nonfiction history). The company representatives, a confident Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and a soft-spoken Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani), invite the villagers for the project presentation as well as a stage for an open forum. At this point of the film, not much dialogue has been exchanged, so we are as taken back as the reps when the residents voice their dissent (perhaps in the politest way a town hall meeting has ever gone).

One of the larger issues lie in the placement of the septic tank. Since the water supply comes from the spring water, the septic tank will affect inhabitants who are located south of the village. Though quiet and tense, their logical protests are an amusing inversion of the supposed bumpkins that the company had presumed them to be (never mind that everyone in the village has impeccable taste in parkas). As the reps find themselves holed between reciting a stale PR-cut response and wanting to impart a more humane answer, we might also find that our empathy begins to warp and bend as context peels layers away.

Takumi is the only resident who offers a hopeful compromise. “Balance is key,” he says, acknowledging that his ancestors had once been intruders on untouched land. But what is balance? When Takahashi and Mayuzumi are at the town hall, they are seen as the “bad guys,” but when they relay the issues back to the company president and project consultant, the weight of responsibility and morality shifts. Conventional balance, where yin is yanged and the scales are level, is traded in favor of the metaphor of moving water, in which equilibrium can be self-established after periods of turbulence. Aside from the evident downstream of eating shit (figuratively and literally), the film’s pace reflects the kind of storytelling current where serenity gains momentum once things take a downward turn, crashing until an ultimatum is reached.

The film’s flow is informed by the composer, Eiko Ishibashi, who had previously collaborated with Hamaguchi in Drive My Car. Originally, Evil Does Not Exist was conceived as a short visual companion to Ishibashi’s score, but Hamaguchi had then extended the piece to a principled ecological drama (those who wish to experience the original version can seek out the dialogue-free Gift). Because it lends more to the atmosphere rather than human relationships, Evil Does Not Exist will feel different from watching the whimsical anthology of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. But the Hamaguchi approach is still pervasive. While ambiguous motives are concealed behind the sparsely translated images and off-screen gunshots, the borderline surrealism finds itself present within the negative space and unspoken desire.

Despite Takumi’s imparting wisdom that there can be co-existence of two supposedly apparent things, there is an irony in saying that evil does not exist. Is it possible goodness is prominent if there are no bad things to counter? In some ways, the film’s murky state might give the impression that those bad things, whether they formulate or re-emerge from a buried ground, can overcome in a moment’s notice, fogging a bright mind or shadow over a good heart.

Now playing @ Coolidge Corner Theatre