2024 Top Ten List #8 Monster (Kaibutsu)

 

Director Hirokazu Kore-eda

Kore-eda on the set

Hinata Hiiragi and Sōya Kurokawa

MONSTER (Kaibutsu)                      A-                                                                                         Japan  (127 mi)  2023 ‘Scope  d: Hirokazu Kore-eda

What actually happened doesn’t matter.                                                                                        —Makiko Fushimi (Yûko Tanaka), school principal

Throughout his career Kore-eda has made heartfelt films known for their subtly crafted storytelling, made with genuine purpose and hope, where the humane spirit he generates makes him one of the few directors you’d actually want to meet and personally hang out with, hopefully delving into endless conversations, as what’s so fascinating about him is his appreciation for what makes us truly human, where perhaps more than any other director it’s his open tolerance and empathetic sensitivity that stand out.  This unusual film starts out like a hot mess, one disaster after another, where it’s all about some hidden trauma, told out of sequence from an adult’s perspective, using a labyrinthine structure that’s hard to follow, before eventually lurching into the protected world of Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman (2021), with two kids just being themselves, ultimately becoming a film about love and friendship, told with a quiet sensitivity, with an incredible musical score by Ryuichi Sakamoto, his last composition before succumbing to cancer just months before the release, with the film dedicated to him, where the tenderness at the end veers into Miyazaki territory, yet also the imaginary realms of Kurosawa’s DODES’KA-DEN (1970).  This guy does amazing things with kids, probably better than anyone else, as he showed us with Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai) (2004), where what he really reveals is that kids have their own secret universe separate and apart from that of adults and their parents, yet it can be transfixing to see them in their own element.  According to Kore-eda, the perspective of children is a world completely inaccessible to adults, who are often unaware of the unintended impact they can have, “As adults, we’re completely ignorant that we might be monsters.”  What’s really surprising is how it appears to be about one thing, but then the perspective is completely altered, revealing an entirely different point of view, actually returning back to the same moment in time, but seeing it with fresh eyes, suggesting truth is elusive, often spiraling out of control, deliberately twisted and contorted into something it is not, where it is often hard to tell the difference.  One of the rare instances when Kore-eda directs a film he didn’t write himself, his first since Maborosi (Maboroshi no hikari) (1995), as the script was written by Yûji Sakamoto, perhaps best known writing for television, winning the Best Screenplay award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, yet meticulously staged and skillfully edited by the filmmaker, becoming a triptych puzzle film about subjective perspectives and truths, where a seemingly straightforward narrative is retold from three different points of view and shifts subtly as new details emerge.  What appears to be a film about a teacher bullying a young student ultimately becomes something more complicated, where even the title is ambiguous, with viewers continually changing who they identify as the monster, becoming a fascinating study of the human condition, exposing the full extent of how we misinterpret one another, failing to grasp each other’s full humanity, revealing a sense of disconnect and miscommunication, opening up our eyes to worlds we rarely see, told with exquisite poetry and grace.  This is one of the better films in exposing the nature of bias, as assumptions are made with some but not all the facts, where there are always pieces of a story we never see, some of which remains shrouded under a cloud of lies, making it difficult to ascertain the real truth, but this film exposes the dangers of prematurely drawing conclusions without grasping the whole picture, where our rush to judgment in this day and age of social media may be the real monster, a world of judgment, accusations, fear, and mistrust, where things we don’t really understand are given scornful labels like evil or monster.   

Shot in ‘Scope by Ryûto Kondô, who also shot Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku) (2018), which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, carrying over actress Sakura Andô, who was the heart and soul of that film, appearing here as a single mother Saori raising her moody fifth grade son Minato (Sōya Kurokawa), whose existential travails comprise the moral complexity of the film.  In the opening sequence they watch a raging fire completely demolishing a high-rise building, resembling a towering inferno, which brings the image of a catastrophe front and center, accompanied by recurring shots of water streaming out of a dam, offering the possibility that eventually the dam could break.  This sense of foreboding continues throughout the film, suggesting a potential disaster awaits, yet this is a film that continually changes before our eyes, where it takes a while before viewers comprehend just what’s going on, instead remaining indecipherable, as it’s often hard to believe what we see, literally altering our expectations moment by moment.  When Minato comes home from school with bruises, or just one shoe, then inexplicably cuts his hair before disappearing out of the house altogether, she eventually discovers him alone splashing around in the darkness of what appears to be an abandoned railroad tunnel.  Seeking answers for his erratic behavior, his perplexing response is alarming, Monster - Official Clip - Pigs Brain YouTube (1:18).  Concerned for his safety, she seeks out the school authorities in an attempt to find out what’s going on, but rather than offer any understandable explanation, they instead uniformly apologize to her in an exaggerated spectacle that borders on the surreal, robotically repeating the same scripted mantra, “We accept your opinion with seriousness, and we will provide appropriate instruction in the future.”  Undeterred by their non-answers, she makes repeated visits to uncover the truth but is stonewalled each and every time.  By sheer accident, the suspected teacher, Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama), blurts out that Minato is actually bullying one of his fellow students, Yori Hoshikawa (Hinata Hiiragi), leaving Saori utterly shocked by the accusations, but when she visits the alleged persecuted child, he has nothing but kind things to say about Minato, calling him his friend.  Adding to the mystique is Yori’s alcoholic father, a violent, often abusive man, introducing bizarre, even nonsensical expressions that the kids are often heard repeating, especially when they’re alone, like some kind of game.  The film shifts from Saori’s viewpoint to that of Mr. Hori, revisiting some of the same events through flashback sequences, but they play out substantially differently, as we see the incredibly cruel and demeaning treatment of Yori coming from his fellow classmates, viewing him as being different, like he’s an alien, as he’s always siding with the girls, which is another way of saying they suspect he is gay.  To his credit, Yori (which is primarily a girl’s name in Japan) ignores most of this vicious homophobia playing out in the classroom, but Minato injures himself trying to divert attention away from their sadistic behavior, but relents to pressures of conformity and doesn’t want to appear to be defending Yori, as then he’ll become a target, so he blames Mr. Hori, perhaps a perfect example of the idiom “hurt people hurt people.”  School authorities are seen steering Hori away from the conflict, not wishing to put the school in a negative light, insisting that he apologize for things he didn’t even do.  Eventually, however, he’s the subject of a mob mentality newspaper article blaming him for the ugly scandal in the classroom, where he’s made the scapegoat by school authorities and loses his job, where fear is the driving factor, avoiding outside scrutiny at all costs, viewing truth as an inconvenience, part of a system that devalues both parents and teachers, while actual events reveal he is wrongfully accused, but this knowledge only comes later in the film, challenging viewers to rethink their own perceptions of what they’ve seen.   

The third section explores the depth of the relationship between Minato and Yori, exposing how intimately close they really are to each other, including Minato’s public denials of friendship in front of their classmates, as this film veers into the same territory as Lukas Dhont’s Close (2022), where too much same sex intimacy is subject to hostility and cruel heckling in the classroom, who mercilessly humiliate Yori on a daily basis, where it’s positively stunning how matter-of-factly the queerness of children is repressed (same sex marriage is still illegal in Japan), with the film also winning the Queer Palme for the best LGBTQ story.  Even when they’re alone, Minato instinctively pushes him away during an embrace, not wanting to get drawn into something he doesn’t really understand.  Toxic masculinity is on display, something Yori is routinely used to putting up with, but not Minato, discovering how difficult it is to open himself up after the death of his father, afraid of being seen as vulnerable, so instead he blames his teacher.  Similarly, the school principal Makiko Fushimi (Yûko Tanaka) is equally challenged, as she was the driver in a tragic car accident running over her grandchild, but due to concerns about the school’s reputation, she may have placed the blame on her husband who is currently serving a jail sentence.  Fushimi (a former music teacher) and Minato come together in a beautiful scene where she teaches him to play the trombone, to literally blow his troubles away, reminding him “happiness is something anyone can have,” offering invaluable insight into their character.  These added layers of nuance truly complicate what we see, where there is a constantly shifting canvas, providing a disturbing context of how difficult it is to come to terms with the truth, as parents never know what’s going on at school with their kids, and the teachers never know what’s going on at home with their students.  Rather than the monster he is portrayed to be, Mr. Hori is actually helpful to his students, even out of the classroom, yet his reputation for kindness is trashed by a student who hasn’t any idea of the havoc he’s caused, where the consequences of a schoolroom accusation recall similar exacerbating circumstances in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt (Jagten) (2012).  In much the same way, Yori is not the monster the other kids accuse him of being, as his kind-hearted nature is emotionally affecting, though only Minato seems to pick up on that, yet he’s afraid to publicly come to his defense, as he doesn’t want to become the object of classroom derision and abuse.  He’s not strong enough to ward off that kind of meanness in the world.  When there is word of an approaching typhoon, as in Kore-eda’s After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku) (2016), the two kids go missing amidst dangerous mudslides in the mountains, causing immense distress for Saori and Mr. Hori, who are willing to bypass a cautionary restricted area and enter the danger zone to look for them.  As tension mounts, accompanied by torrential rain, they grow more frantically desperate in their search.  In a nod to a film like Gaspar Noé’s provocatively controversial Irreversible (Irréversible) (2002), which is actually told backwards in time, opening in horrific tragedy before retreating to a much sunnier time, Kore-eda playfully explores the innocent dynamic of their childhood friendship when it is just them, tucked away in an abandoned railcar with no outside interference, coming very close to an expression of pure love and tenderness in a protected refuge where nothing is taboo, where the soft tones of Sakamoto’s piano are a perfect compliment.  In contrast to the confusing outset of the film, the simplicity of their budding friendship that blossoms into a love affair is a thing to behold, just a marvelous expression of true joy, leaving viewers completely shocked by how quickly our perceptions can change, opening up our eyes to untold possibilities that we didn’t even know exist.  Yet there are no sensational, shocking twists, as we might expect, where the patient, subdued tone leads to an undeniable pleasure, offering a transcendent finale that literally soars, becoming one of the best and more disturbingly complex films of the year.  

Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo)

 

 

STILL WALKING (Aruitemo aruitemo)                   B                                                               Japan  (114 mi)  2008  d:  Hirokazu Kore-eda

“I think my parents would have been more comfortable if they were more like characters in an Ozu film,” Mr. Kore-eda said.  A more relevant Japanese master, “in terms of a worldview I feel much closer to,” he added, is Mikio Naruse, whose characters are usually more openly anguished: “His movies really understand that humans are flawed creatures, and he makes no judgment against them.”

—Hirokazu Kore-eda from a New York Times interview by Dennis Lim, August 16, 2009, Hirokazu Kore-eda's 'Still Walking' - Familial Loss and Proustian ... 

Japan excels at making rhythm of life family drama films that capture the naturalistic intimacy of being there in the moment, character studies centered exclusively on a family and their various travails with one another.  Directors Yasujirō Ozu (1903 – 1963) and Mikio Naruse (1905 – 1969) are the standard bearers in this respect, raising ordinary living to exclusive heights never before attained simply by the way it’s being filmed, observing objectively, without an ounce of sentimentality, using a poetic eye that places a value in accumulating meticulous detail.  In this way, characters soon become known to an audience that begins to identify with them, feeling what they feel.  While that is the method by the conscientiously precise Kore-eda here as well, chronicling a day in the life of an ordinary family, he nonetheless breaks from Ozu’s formal home drama structure, providing a more spirited free-for-all conveying multiple perspectives from different characters, each seemingly going their own way, finding their own natural rhythm, with kids constantly intruding and interrupting, where this film has its share of singular moments, but much of the impact is short-lived and fails to sustain itself over the long haul through strong character development, as there are few appealing characters, where exposed flaws and long standing personal resentments are just as much an inherent attribute as likability, maintaining a similarity to conventional family dramas from the 50’s to the 70’s that accentuate a post-war normality of a rising middle class, revealing potential economic pitfalls in the modern era, yet falling short of discovering something new.  Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien went to Japan to make his own tribute to Ozu and produced the luminous CAFÉ LUMIÈRE (2003), which is basically a quiet contemplation of everyday life, but is given transcendent qualities through his ravishingly beautiful rendition of signature Ozu shots, such as laundry hanging on a line or a passing trolley with connecting lines reaching out into the sky while off in the distance trains might be seen quietly passing by.  A neglected personal favorite is Naomi Kawase’s SUZAKU (1997), among the quietest films on record, but one that perfectly balances the fragile beauty of a rural mountainside village with the haunting, yet fleeting memories of those that inhabit the region, showing how life and death are interconnected by deep seeded memories that have a profound and lasting effect.  And perhaps the biggest and most pleasant surprise was Katsuhito Ishii’s The Taste of Tea (Cha no aji) (2004), easily one of the most brilliantly imaginative of all the family dramas, not afraid to resort to animé, surrealism, or magical realism, splicing together life segments on each family member, slowly developing a composite portrait of each one, praising to the hilt their own unique individuality, which ultimately helps define and distinguish themselves in the world around them.  More recently, cult director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s TÔKYÔ SONATA (2008) subversively challenges a nation’s conformity by altering small details in the family routine that lead to an unraveling of the prevailing social order leaving one precariously close to the horror genre, or a major catastrophe.  In very special ways, all these films creatively play a significant part in revealing a national identity. 

Made the same year as Olivier Assayas’s SUMMER HOURS (2008), among the more highly acclaimed films in each director’s career, both known for their novelesque style, with both films involving three generations of family, using objects and interiors as psychological mirrors, linking memory association with personal identity.  Kore-eda doesn’t do anything wrong here, but he doesn’t do enough to redefine the genre or challenge it in any significant way, as he has done with every one of his more uncompromising and strikingly original earlier films.  Instead it’s clear his intentions were to make a more audience-friendly film, ruffling a few feathers with family clashes or moments of stark candor, but otherwise treading a safe line right down the middle that’s likely to offend few and capture the interest of fewer still except those ardent cinephiles that revere Ozu.  It’s a variation on a theme, something like Bertrand Tavernier’s A SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY (1984), where at the grandparent family home, their children and grandchildren pay them the requisite visit, which can be told lovingly, like Tavernier, with all the sunny charm of a Renoir painting, graceful in a classical style, or with the acid rancor of Arnaud Desplechin’s A CHRISTMAS TALE (2008), placing the family dysfunction front and center.  Typically in these films, the action is mostly confined to meals and family conversation, offering spontaneous moments of cooking and cleaning, but mostly it’s sitting down together to eat and talk, usually with drinks, all activities taking place in and around the house, as they do here, happily munching on watermelon or grandmother’s deep-fried corn tempura on a hot summer’s day.  The singular event that gathers this family together is the commemoration of an event that occurred 15 years previously, when the eldest son drowned while saving the life of another kid.  While they still have a grown son and daughter that come visit, they lost their chosen child whose memory continues to haunt all of them.  2nd eldest son Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) is an unemployed art restorer who can never live up to his elder brother’s memory, and is viewed as something of a failure as he doesn’t follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a doctor.  Despite making a rare visit, his father barely speaks to him.  Ryota’s wife (Yui Natsukawa) has a young son from a previous marriage who is clearly ignored by this family as well.  Their own daughter (You) continually talks up the idea of her family moving back into the home to take care of her elderly parents, but they’re nearly exhausted already by her all-too brief visits, as she lugs her children in tow that have a way of loudly disturbing the empty stillness they’re used to.  The elderly couple themselves spend the day bickering at one another, where the wife (Kirin Kiki) freely speaks her mind, usually at the expense of someone else, as she gossips and snipes and backstabs without the least bit of concern for the consequences.  This is her family and she can say as she pleases.  Her husband (Yoshio Harada), meanwhile, endures his wife’s complaining by offering a few choice complaints of his own before gruffly stalking off to the privacy of his study.  In this way the world goes around as people are a product of their own accumulated habits.        

If there are any surprises in STILL WALKING, it is in their all-too-brief revelations, such as an awkwardly uncomfortable invitation to the person the eldest son saved, who couldn’t be more embarrassed and ill at ease, yet it’s an invitation he can’t refuse, seemingly punished for living while their beloved son died, invited to remind the whole family of their own grievous discomfort, revealed quite randomly out of nowhere, happening in a split second, and then the moment is gone, where if you blinked, you missed it.  Yet these discoveries reverberate throughout their lifetimes, as couples refuse to forgive their partners for certain misgivings, or children overreact to the authority of their parents and grumble about certain inequities they may attempt to change, spending their lifetime in a futile effort to work out family differences and make things better, but after decades of having little success, they eventually forget what they were fighting about in the first place, as their parent’s age and their proximity to death changes everything.  The film does an excellent job of capturing these minute moments that tend to magnify in time, that were barely paid attention to when they occurred, such as the lazy way that family members overlook what’s happening to others as they get so wrapped up in their own lives.  As a miniature dysfunctional family, this one shows why it’s so hard to get them all back together again, as they’re all such incessantly self-centered individuals.  These candid remarks are surprising, but effortlessly real, where the grandkids barely notice and continue to prance around in their own self-absorbed universe where desert is usually the highpoint of the day.  The film makes no attempt to get at the root of these family tiffs, or offer any sense of growth, but each time someone rubs up against them, it’s like a fissure that continually splits keeping them worlds apart.  The subtlety is commendable, but there are no life altering moments, no crescendos, no dramatic urgency, and very little drama at all, which is why it’s so easy to miss these signs in real life.  In a film, where everything is condensed into 90 minutes or so, it’s easier to figure out, especially when the director allows the audience to see what the characters themselves are missing, but in real time, life is harder to configure when potential life-altering moments disappear in the urgency of routine priorities, seemingly lost forever, only to reappear at funerals when guilt is a harsh reminder.  While it’s obviously a highly personal work, written, directed, and edited by Kor-eda, coming soon after the death of his own mother, nursing very palpable personal guilt, filled with lingering regrets about promises made that never came to fruition, it nonetheless has his unmistakable imprint of modesty, restraint, and self-assured direction, showing a keen intelligence and a lack of sentiment along with an eye for detail, but unfortunately underwhelming results, mostly due to the insipid guitar music used throughout as well as the failure to dramatically connect in any meaningful way with any of the characters.  Yet what’s cleverly intriguing is the parallel way random thoughts or small bits of family lore are passed on through generations while at the same time interjecting visual cues from Ozu’s TOKYO STORY (1953), including a panoramic landscape shot overlooking the tightly congested suburban rooftops with a view of the sea in the distance, while a passing train is clearly evident, all recognizable cinematic reference points from an earlier era.