Evil Does Not Exist

“You can’t get a head start if you aim for perfection,” a clueless moneyed entrepreneur muses during a video chat with his two shell-shocked subordinates in the new film from writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. In the context of the actual conversation the sentiment is even more inane than it sounds on the face of it. And there’s also the question if perfection itself even … exists? The title of this movie seems a definitive statement but it’s ultimately not one that the movie itself really settles. Nevertheless, in its opening scenes, it posits a near-Edenic form of rural life.