Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda
Japan, 2023
It was not what I expected… I thought it was a horror film – T
This is an easy mistake to make with this film by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, a film in which he lays traps and misdirections for the viewer. Some may find it beguiling, others frustrating or perhaps even bewildering. But eventually as the layers are peeled away from the narrative, you are left with a poignant exploration of childhood, friendship, and freedom.
Monster is framed by two cataclysmic events. The film begins with a building ablaze in a lakeside Japanese town, and ends with torrential monsoon rains that trigger a landslide. Portentous signs perhaps, and yet at odds with Monster’s glacial pace and indirect mode of storytelling: revelations come through fragments of speech and cryptic actions.
Maybe that is why the screenwriter, Yuji Sakamoto, needed three bites of the cherry, as we watch the events of Monster three times, on each occasion with a focus on a different character. The shifting perspective brings to mind Kurosawa’s Rashomon, or our film of last week The Killing.
Each of the three acts begins with that apartment block on fire. Onlookers pointedly observe that the building is home to a hostess bar and the suspicion is that arson is the cause. Watching from a balcony not too far away is a fifth-grader, Minato (Soya Kurokawa), and his widowed mother Saori (Sakura Andō). Minato has become sullen of late and it seems more than the usual adolescent angst. For no obvious reason he cuts off his curly locks, he comes home from school with a bloody ear, and he has taken to singing a self-taunting song, ‘Who is the monster?’
As the audience we wonder whether we have the answer to that question when Minato asks his mother if his brain has been replaced by that of a pig. But after he leaps from Saori’s moving car, he finally confesses that he has been bullied and assaulted by his schoolteacher, Mr Hori (Eita Nagayama). Is Mr Hori the monster that we have been looking for?
Saori arrives at the school demanding answers, but rather than having her concerns addressed she is faced by a weird panel of officials, led by the school principal Mrs Fushimi (Yūko Tanaka), and the teacher, Hori. Her questions are met by repeated bowing and a series of ritualistic apologies, but no explanation. The atmosphere brings to mind the affective flatness you sometimes find in the writing of Haruki Murakami. Mr Hori, acts like a schoolchild in trouble himself, but with repeated pressing by Saori he finally responds that Minato is not the victim, but in fact the bully and his target is another classmate Yori (Hinata Hiiragi).
At this point Kore-eda presses restart and we get to watch the events play out all over again, but this time from the perspective of Hori. And predictably, the story that we have been following is not as straightforward as we were led to believe. With this change of perspective every character is seen in a different light: Hori is no longer the monster but a victim of the school’s hypervigilant defense against any criticism. When he tries to explain what happened in the classroom, the principal’s response is:
What actually happened didn’t matter…
It turns out that Yori, a slight, elfin figure with a vivid imagination really is the victim of classroom persecution, with the other boys preying on his perceived delicacy and interest in ‘girls’ stuff’. A perception shared by his alcoholic father, a fleeting presence in the film, who not only came up with the pig’s brain taunt, but with the extensive bruising that Yori attempts to conceal - his abuse is not just emotional.
Monster then moves into its final act, centred on the furtive, deepening friendship between Minato and Yori. The knotted complexity of the early narrative loosens, leaving us with a sensitively drawn portrait of their relationship – a relationship that Minato had disavowed for fear of being drawn into the contempt of his classmates.
The film moves into the realm of the metaphysical. Although live-action, Monster has the otherworldly atmosphere of a Studio Ghibli animation, a world where adolescence becomes a state of existence between the real and the fantastic. In Spirited Away, perhaps the most celebrated of the films of Hayao Miyazaki, a co-founder of Studio Ghibli, a railway carriage serves as a liminal space, a place of transition from childhood to adulthood. A disused train carriage plays a similar role here, but as a space for speculating on big themes: what it means to be born, to live, and to die. And it is here that the two boys, together, face the final deluge.
Monster is a Mobius strip of a movie, looping and complex. The convolutions of the over-written script can be distracting, and yet Kore-eda’s evocation of the textures of classroom life is almost perfect. Especially poignant are the recurrent motifs that he places in our path: a missing shoe shared between friends, blaring trombone notes from the school music room. Each with a specific meaning, these moments punctuate the haunting, plangent piano chords that feature in the impressionistic score by the late composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Key to the film’s success are the compelling performances by the two child actors, Kurokawa Soya and Hiiragi Hinata, playing the two boys who find each other after losing their fathers in contrasting ways. Together they bring an entrancing complexity to the relationship between the two protagonists. As they make their way through a spooky tunnel to that train carriage, Minato tells Yori that his mother said, “Boys who know flower names are not popular with girls”. Yori's quick-witted response is that, “Boys who are afraid of the dark aren't popular with girls either.” Monster ends on a note of ambiguity. After the monsoon the boys are seen running toward a blazing sun. Have they been reborn? Was a monster ever really there? Viewer, you will have to watch the film and decide for yourself.
The perspective-shifting structural device is central to Monster’s examination of the complexity of people and their social networks. Also how your frame of reference can easily lead to misinterpretation and miscommunication… - N
Reids’ Results (out of 100)
C - 73
T - 84
N - 80
S - 78
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As ReidsonFilm approaches our 100th publication here on Substack, we thought we would try something a little different. We are planning to record a podcast where our readers have the opportunity to ask a question. Apparently the term is an AUA episode, which means you can ask us pretty much anything - film-related or not. So, if you have a question stick it in the comments box and we’ll see what happens.
Coming next… Faust(1994)