'Evil Does Not Exist', The Garden Cinema London - Silver Screen Cities: Celebrating city cinema-going

David Kintore is author of the Silver Screen Cities book series.

Just spent a couple of days in Brighton on a rare foray to the south coast of England. It was unusually cold for mid-April and a thick haar hung in the air when I arrived. There was a whiff of faded grandeur about the seafront buildings though the streets were vibrant when the sun finally emerged and the city started to feel as bohemian as its reputation.

On the train back from Brighton to London, I put on my headphones and spent the one-hour journey buoyed in the dreamy cocoon of Kacey Musgraves’ new album, ‘Deeper Well’.

In London, The Garden Cinema was showing the Japanese film ‘Evil Does Not Exist’. I’d been to this cinema once before and marvelled at its amazing art deco design. The film was on in Screen 2, a small intimate auditorium with comfortable seats and wonderfully stylish art deco wall lights.

Written and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, ‘Evil Does Not Exist’ starts very slow – I was wondering if the log cutting scene was ever going to end – but soon becomes enthralling.

There are echoes of Bill Forsyth’s 1983 film ‘Local Hero’ as a rural community is faced with the prospect of a development that is going to bring money and jobs to the region but at the cost of damaging the environment.

The wintry landscape is beautifully filmed.

Strange electronic music fuses in a surprising interplay with nature in one scene where Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), the young daughter of local man Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), tramps alone through a snowy forest.

The film gets more and more hypnotic and engaging as it goes along, though it was pretty clear when the lights came on at the end of the film that everyone in the audience, myself included, was baffled by the final ten minutes or so.

On emerging from The Garden Cinema after the film ended, we continued the afternoon’s Japanese theme by walking to nearby Covent Garden to drop in to Moto saké bar where I sampled a couple of excellent sakés before deciding to buy a bottle of the one that was from Gunma Prefecture.

I’ve had plenty sakés from neighbouring Niigata Prefecture but this is the first I’ve had from Gunma.

Looking forward to quaffing it when I get back home to Dundee.