I’d start this review off with a pithy quip about the evils of wall-to-wall scoring, but there are plenty of examples that I really like, including recent ones such as Oppenheimer and Across the Spider-Verse (one could say that this evil doesn’t really exist…). That said, in an era filled with maximalism, it’s always refreshing having a score like Eiko Ishibashi’s Evil Does Not Exist that’s incredibly restrained. Of course, this won’t come as a surprise for those that have seen Drive My Car.
The film follows Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), a sort of handyman and caretaker for the mountain village of Mizubiki, and his daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa). Takumi is knowledgeable about and protective of the village and a way of life harmonious with the natural world around him. However, a company from Tokyo seeks to build a glamping site near the village, threatening the harmony of Mizubiki and the surrounding landscape.
Unlike Drive My Car, which has barely any music until about the forty-minute mark, Evil Does Not Exist has music immediately. Taking a child’s point of view (Hana), we look up into the canopy of a snowy Japanese forest as she walks along. It should be a calming, picturesque walk through nature. And at first it is. But the score’s main theme, of driving, piercing strings, builds from serene to unease; something is wrong. The cue then ends abruptly, leaving us without any musical resolution (a common device in the score). By the end of this several-minute sequence my heart was racing and it felt like a weight was pressing into my chest. But the walk itself ends without issue.
Later on we hear the cue “Hana V.2” – an electronic-heavy, almost spacey track seemingly of alien origin – while a several children appear completely frozen. Several seconds later it turns out they’re simply playing a game, akin to “red light, green light”, with the cue being pure misdirection.
This ends up being a frequent tactic in Evil Does Not Exist: music as juxtaposition, music as foreshadowing. The expected music for long scenes traversing a forest, ritually collecting river water, or examining plants would lean into the serenity of nature, embracing the world that the film has immersed us into. Instead, we’re always set on edge without fully knowing why.
Conversely, there’s a long sequence halfway through the film where we finally leave Mizubiki, finding ourselves first in Tokyo and then on the highway between Tokyo and the village. During this sequence there is minimal, if any, music, serving to further contrast life between Tokyo and Mizubiki. Given the enduring unease felt by the end of many of Ishibashi’s cues, it’s easy to imagine how the conflict between man and nature will ultimately unfold.
Credit for the musical placement must be given both to Ishibashi as well as the film’s director Ryusuke Hamaguchi. While one of Ishibashi’s goals with the score was juxtaposition, she wrote various cues and handed them over to Hamaguchi, giving him final say for the placement. I know that some will quibble with the “trueness” of this approach, but that’s a conversation for a different day.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning the genesis of the film. Ishibashi approached Hamaguchi to prepare visuals to accompany her live musical performances. Hamaguchi wanted to create images that would maintain interest, leading him to write a script and then begin filming. This led to Evil Does Not Exist as well as Gift, the latter is about half an hour shorter and is the video accompaniment to Ishibashi’s live shows.