EIKO ISHIBASHI
Evil Does Not Exist DRAG CITY 8/10
Sublimely disquieting soundtrack to – and inspiration for – Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest film.
By Tom Pinnock
WATCH Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new film, and you’ll see the countryside that Eiko Ishibashi and her partner Jim O’Rourke call home: the snow-capped extinct volcanoes, the dense forests and grassy meadows, frozen lakes and icy mountain streams. Yet it’s not by chance that the setting of Evil Does Not Exist matches the area west of Tokyo where the composer lives –the film is deeply interlinked with Ishibashi’s work and life, the visuals and the music both serving as inspirations to each other.
After Hamaguchi heard Ishibashi’s 2018 LP The Dream My Bones Dream, the pair began working together on 2021’s Drive My Car. It picked up an Oscar for Best International Feature Film, and Ishibashi’s jazzy, verdant soundtrack –at once accessible and experimental –was a big part of its success. When she then asked Hamaguchi to create visuals she could perform to onstage, he came to the area where she and O’Rourke live and began to film, initially inspired by a handful of electronic instrumentals she had created. The director enjoyed what he’d filmed so much, though, that he turned it into a full film, with dialogue and storyline, and requested more musical material that Ishibashi then wrote to the finished edit.