For theists, the problem of evil has presented a nagging counterpoint to unchallenged belief in God, though sometimes it is precisely the challenge of proving that bolsters the act of believing and allots evil its due place in the order of things. For atheists, or those in-between, the question takes on a more matter-of-fact slant. Evil exists, it is everywhere, and it is undesirable, sure, but also inevitable. Psychology and innately biological traits influence one’s tendencies and proclivities, but social life — and the moral language that issues from it — provides the ultimate arbiter of our capacity to comprehend and reject ethical norms of right and wrong. So say the constructivists at least, and their legitimacy stems from the fact that, irrespective of whether ethical norms are metaphysically universal, their adoption is by and large anything but.
In Richard Hunter’s provocatively-titled first feature, Foul Evil Deeds, moral relativism over the question of evil is taken to the limit. We’re witness to a gamut of disparate, everyday lives, strung together in a multi-person narrative set in modern Britain and shot through the grainy lens of mini-DV. Most belong to archetypes of contemporary capitalism: a vicar and his wife living under suburban routine; an ex-con out on parole and cleaning toilets for a living; three male youths hanging out after, or during, school hours; an immigrant family; a lone accountant; a wealthy lawyer and his son. With the exception of the immigrant family, they are all white; other than the lawyer, they all appear to inhabit the same lower-to-middle class world. There is, in essence, nothing special about our sample size, in the same way that there is nothing special about the evil they do.
But the term evil is a stretch here. Foul Evil Deeds plays like a riff on Michael Haneke, whose clammy themes and clinical editing tend to culminate in a broader thesis against bourgeois rot. In Hunter’s case, however, the narrative arcs of his different characters never quite intersect, even as their shared existence under an impersonal contemporary landscape is made plausible by the camera’s steady indifference. The vicar shares a dead bedroom with his wife; he’s got a porn problem, while she’s plagued by maggot trouble. The cleaner’s case worker, a hijabi no less, refuses with “the same condescending face” his request to see his children. The immigrant father, working at a laundromat, inappropriately touches his co-worker while giving the latter a massage. Throughout most of the film, the tension threatens to boil over into something unspeakable, awaiting a trigger or sign, or simply the inevitability of latent evil manifesting in taut, metallic form.
Disappointingly, the film lacks the conviction of its form, settling for superficial illustrations of human desire and boredom that can’t quite be categorized as evil or, indeed, even foul. Provocation comes to a head when confronted with simple banality, of which Foul Evil Deeds indulges plenty in. In a way, it works better as sociological cross-section than philosophical rumination, insofar as the subconscious wants and obscured inner lives of everyday Joes are brought under closer scrutiny. That being said, closer doesn’t equate keener: with neither further background to lend the film’s characters greater verisimilitude nor an authorial imprint upon its ethical canvas, Hunter’s intentional amoralism quickly reveals insipid apathy beneath. Just as the main promotional still, of vicar and wife grinning eerily, is nothing more than a trick of the editing table, so is context everything.
Published as part of Locarno Film Festival 2024 — Dispatch 2.
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