[KineJapan] Hamaguchi Ryūsuke wins at London F.F.

[Roger Macy]

Hamaguchi Ryūsuke’s Aku wa sonzai shinai / EvilDoes Not Exist has won the main prize of best film in competition, at theLondon Film Festival. Award winners announced at 67th BFI London Film Festival


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Award winners announced at 67th BFI London Film Festival

The winning feature films will screen again this evening to close the festival, while the winning short film is ...
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The Festival announcement said:-

DriveMy Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new drama sees a community fighting topreserve its principles and the integrity of their natural world. A campingsite development that’s under way in the peaceful village of Mizubikiwill forever change the community and surrounding environment. The investorsfeel differently: ‘A little pollution won’t affect the water’. Driven byHamaguchi’s sonorous and poetic script, his drama, a microcosm of widerconcerns, burrows deep into the pressing issues of value and survival but neverloses faith in humanity. 

TheOfficial Competition jury said: “The Official Competition jury has chosenEvil Does Not Exist as the LondonFilm Festival Best Film for 2023. Subtle, cinematic and underscored by fully realisedperformances, Hamaguchi’s assured drama supersedes the sum of its parts. It isboth a lyrical portrait of family and community, and a nuanced consideration ofthe ethics of land development. Amidst a strong competition the jury isunanimous in our admiration!” 

I saw it at San Sebastian,where it was not in competition but in the ‘Perlak’ strand, picked pearls fromelsewhere. It is certainly my favourite Hamaguchi film. In the protagonist,when he is teaching tracking skills to his young daughter, I saw something of DersuUzala, not Kurosawa’s film particularly but the historical character depictedby Vladimir Arsenyev. That may be just me, as I read it not so long ago, inenglish translation. Assuming the film was screened using the same, uncredited, englishsubtitles, the award is even more of an achievement as, I thought, thetranslation was sometimes off-register.

Memorable strengths for me included the realistically messy publicmeeting that develops the story. Putting the autocrat / CEO of the developmentcompany only in remote meetings was another realistic touch of unaccountability. Did Hamaguchi needto make the development company a talent agency ?  He could have saved that for its own story ??

Anyway, congratulations.

Roger

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