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| Director Hirokazu Kore-eda |
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| Kore-eda on the set |
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| 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.
