While easily avoidable misunderstandings are the schlocky slang of rom-coms, revisiting events to reveal different points of view remains one of drama’s most eloquent techniques. Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon still blows film school minds, while Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel recently honed this storytelling structure to a sharp feminist edge. But these explorations of subjectivity have caveats of character. They’re retellings of the same story where the narrators’ willful self-deception and unreliability are baked into our interpretations. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s riveting Monster is nowhere near as personally damning as these movies. It approaches each new facet of its world with a resigned compassion that understands the blame systems, not individuals, hold for sapping the conclusions we draw of empathy. Our world is not built for us to understand one another, which is nearly impossible in the first place. Monster’s mystery is one only in the ways that all of our experiences are inherently mysterious to others; its drama is devastating, a tragically inevitable snowball rolled by this existential loneliness; its warmth is gloriously defiant of this fate.
For the first time since his debut film Maborosi, Kore-eda has directed a movie without writing its screenplay. Though he is an accomplished director of children (just watch Shoplifters), perhaps the filmmaker thought writer Yuji Sakamoto was better equipped to handle the perspective-shifting, expectation-defying Monster. Sakamoto designs the intricate story around power and powerlessness, around a corporatized culture that increasingly values plausible deniability over justice, and around the especially hidden inner lives of children.
Of course it’s hard for the newly widowed Saori (Sakura Ando). Even if her quiet tween son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) hadn’t recently lost his dad, it’s not like he would—or even know how to—open up about what’s causing his mood swings, his outbursts of destruction, and his emotional withdrawal. We know that Monster is a world filled with consequences. It opens on firefighters rushing to put out a blazing building. But we also know that what seems to be the obvious kindling, that a teacher, Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama), is abusing his fifth-grade student, is too simple and too cruel to be all that meets the eye. And yet, a storm is brewing. The brutally tear-jerking truth (or is it truths?) that accompanies it is nearly as relentless. As the story unfolds, then folds back upon itself for a pair of retellings, the stonewalling of the school’s steely principal (Yûko Tanaka) begins to make sense. The world of Minato’s suspiciously carefree classmate Yori (Hinata Hiiragi) blossoms painfully and beautifully.
Allowing these nuances to reveal themselves requires the patience to circumnavigate instinct. Monster is inherently connected to the presumptions of guilt and shame that can linger lastingly in all cultures, but especially in Japan. In every confrontation—tightly framed by Ryuto Kondo and pulled taut by Kore-eda’s own editing—there is another presence in the room. The scandal-hungry press. The shamefaced administration. Anxiety about what the conservative crowd will think, and the despondence that comes with knowing that these opinions may be irreversible. As Saori struggles to defend her son, as Hori struggles to defend himself, and as the children struggle to have their struggles known, the innocents all catch strays, deflected by the precious and terrified bulwarks erected by institutions, either as physical as an elementary school or as phantasmic as masculinity.
But Monster is just as intent on undermining this deep-seated dedication to first impressions. Its drawn-out plot repetition, exhaustively constructed with details of sound and image sneaking new information into our senses, combats our least generous impulses with constant empathy. Compassion cascades down Monster’s ever-complicating narrative like a downpour, sweeping us along gullies carved out by controlled, honest performances from child actors Kurokawa and Hiiragi. We’re submerged under the fragile piano and mournful horns of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s final score. These duct-slayers harmonize in a natural swell of emotions, weather and coherence—a climax of comprehension laid bare in Kore-eda’s triumphant, rending finale.
Regardless of whose perspective we share, Monster’s story always flees the dense confusion of the city and ends up in the natural clarity of the wild—a literally liberating notion considering the young boys at its core and a symbolically liberating one considering the distance gained from society. Though Sakamoto inspires us to pay rapt attention with his handiwork, blazing a complex trail that leads to this deep breath of fresh air , the melodramatic shortcuts he takes can be just as blunt as the assumptions his story refutes. Some information is revealed only to be undermined, and pulses with the faint glowing outline of capital-I Importance until its matching contradiction is revealed. These moments shout the technique’s abilities brashly, the power of the rhetoric overwhelmed by volume. But even if the surprising Monster isn’t always delicate enough, Kore-eda’s tenderness makes you realize that those who hide under the bed were driven there—and that the driving forces will continue pushing those we treasure most as long as we allow them.
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Writer: Yuji Sakamoto
Starring: Sakura Andō, Eita Nagayama, Soya Kurokawa, Hinata Hiiragi, Yūko Tanaka
Release Date: November 22, 2023
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
For all the latest movie news, reviews, lists and features, follow @PasteMovies.