Patrons selected a quiet but intense Japanese film to kick off 2025. Evil Does Not Exist, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's follow-up to the widely acclaimed Drive My Car, began production as something akin to a music video. As the work developed, Hamaguchi became captivated with telling the story of reserved small town residents threatened by a "glamping" resort site project. The film's ending is its most noteworthy and controversial aspect; as such, it naturally assumes a lot of the focus in my Films in Focus episode. But there are other fascinating elements at play too, including the personal struggles of the talent agents hired by a corporation to deceive the townspeople. As described by Matthew Smith, the patron who recommended this film, Evil Does Not Exist "shifts at times between a meditative look at living and working within nature, a process film about zoning disputes, a workplace hangout movie, and something less explicable than mythic." I found the experience at times frustrating but always fascinating, and it made for a great discussion. Meanwhile, I took the advances of my TWIN PEAKS Character Series all the way to the edge of the top ten.
And sadly, I had to pay tribute to David Lynch on the event of his passing away - something I did for the first time on Patreon (publicly, not just for patrons).
What are the January rewards?
