Movie Night: Evil Does Not Exist (2023) by Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Welcome everyone to the next movie night hosted by David and Philip. It has been a while since we have done a movie night, so we will remind everyone that this will be a one time only event.

We ask that everyone watch beforehand the movie "Evil Does Not Exist" (2023), by the Oscar-winning Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi. The film won the Grand Jury Prize and the International Federation of Film Critics Award at the 80th Venice International Film Festival in 2023 and Best Film at the 2024 Asian Film Awards.

The movie is currently streaming through The Criterion Channel (if you have a subscription or a free trial) and it is available for free at Kanopy (which you may have access to through your local public library). You can also rent it on Apple TV.

View the trailer here.

Here is some info about the movie on Wikipedia.

When we get together, we can talk about every aspect of the movie But there is one aspect of the movie that we will especially focus on (at least at first).

WARNING: This next part of the blurb contains statements about the movie that some people might consider to be spoilers. So feel free to stop reading, watch the movie, and then come back to read the rest of this blurb.

You have been warned!!

Just like in "Asako I and II" (another Ryusuke Hamaguchi film which David and Philip did a meetup on years ago), in "Evil Does Not Exist" a mysterious sudden unusual event occurs which seems to come out of nowhere and to be hard to explain based on what came before.

Philip has listened to a lot of podcasts done by people commenting on the movie. In every single case, the podcasters talked about how much they loved the movie, except for the "mysterious sudden unusual event". The podcasters went on to say how they preferred to think about the movie as if the "mysterious sudden unusual event" had never happened.

This confused the hell out of Philip, since for him all the events in the movie only make sense in the light of the "mysterious sudden unusual event". For Philip, this event made everything else in the movie snap into place and become meaningful and important.

Obviously participants can talk about any aspects of the movie they want. But we will start with the topic of how the "mysterious sudden unusual event" influences everything having to do with how we interpret the rest of the movie; or alternatively how it maybe does NOT do this (as the podcasters seemed to want to say).

If any of the participants speaks Japanese, please let us know right away since it would be great to have a Japanese speaker in the group who could inform us about possible flaws or ambiguities in the subtitles.

Enjoy!