It might not have the same status as the Meet Cute or the Final Showdown, but cinema has a rich history of wood chopping scenes. Whether it’s westerners going to town on some timber in Shane, Ralph Ineson working through some issues between scares in The Witch, or Steve Rodgers’ full-Looney Tunes efficacy in Avengers: Age of Ultron, they’re frequently used to express seething masculinity, often a forbearer of things to come. They also serve as a nifty tool for filmmakers looking to establish rhythm, from their metronomic sound design to the snappy bit of editing that the final slice provides. Our implicit, unspoken understanding of the sequence makes it a perfect call to action at the very start of Evil Does Not Exist, only it’s inaction. Watching Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), alone in a bright patch of snow-caked outdoors, patiently take one swing after another in single, steady, unbroken take, is both a potent tone setter, and a warning that this one won’t be troubled to go at anyone’s speed but its own.

This won’t come as a surprise to fans of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s previous film, Drive My Car, the three-hour character study by way of Uncle Vanya that nabbed Japan its first ever Best Picture nomination at the Oscars in 2022, but even those well-suited to this sort of languid pacing might experience an adjustment period. Laying its scene in a comely, lost-to-time Japanese mountain village, Evil’s plot, concerning a distant corporation’s desire to set up a Glamping site in the area and the subsequent reluctance of the townsfolk, consistently plays second fiddle to the film’s tone and mood. The ecological themes and warnings against heedless capitalism are present in both the narrative and dialogue, but are expressed more clearly in image and sound, as though the movie’s atmosphere faces the same risk of encroachment as the natural landscape on display, and shares its steely resolve to remain unchanged.

Barricading yourself against incursion runs the risk of losing the audience, and while Hamaguchi’s singular technique is consistently admirable, it ensures a lack of genuine investment in his movie’s characters. Takumi and his daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) share a steady and inviting bond with both each other and their surroundings, and the invading talent agency representatives Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) effectively toggle between sympathetic and dangerous, but every interaction feels as though it’s taking place behind a glass wall, an art installation of human interaction. Their performances, while sturdy and believable, are similarly downplayed, rendering their immaculate knowability as something easier to admire than genuinely invest in.

Creating a void in the center of the film is a feature and not a bug, and Hamaguchi’s inverted approach allows for the afterthoughts of most productions to fully take center stage. Yoshio Kitagawa’s sumptuous cinematography is a hushed wonder to behold, displaying a religious reverence to the landscape, weather, and resolute process of living off of the land, while Eiko Ishibashi’s heart-swelling score has the agency of a central character. The looser grip on the plot also permits the movie to slide down tiny pockets of intrigue without rushing back to more typical moments of consequence. An endless, awkward town hall meeting and a similarly staccato conversation over the course of a long drive might seem like elongated diversions, but Hamaguchi’s unwavering patience turns them into set pieces. He saves the main event for last.

The starry-eyed meandering that makes up the bulk of the film comes to a startling halt in the film’s final passage, a gorgeously staged finale that packs an almost mythological punch, though its true motivating factors, and even literal result, remain difficult to parse. Such are the realities of making a movie so deliberately opaque, and where Drive My Car serves its rigorous intellectualism with a side of lyricism, Hamaguchi’s latest flips the ratio wholly in the other direction. Bold enough to be lionized by an army of champions and so inscrutable as to enrage a similarly militant audience, it goes without saying that Evil Does Not Exist won’t be for everyone. Weekend matinee fare it is not, but those able to tune into its frequency will be less than eager to tune out.