Film Review - Monster
Images courtesy of Madman Entertainment.
Perspective is a funny, untrustworthy thing. People can have differing perspectives on a singular story, resulting in many subjective truths. This is the foundation of Monster, a Japanese psychological drama now screening in Australian theatres.
Monster, masterfully guided by celebrated Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu, is broken into three parts. Instead of the fundamental three act structure of setup, confrontation, and resolution, it is fragmented into three different perspectives of a series of events, leaving the viewer with the responsibility to decipher the truth.
The film introduces single mum Saori (Sakura Andô), who begins to worry when her pre-teen son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) starts behaving strangely. While the duo watches a high-rise building on fire, Minato asks his mother if the brain of a pig was transplanted into a human, would the resulting creature be a human or pig, or maybe some kind of monster. In the following days, Minato cuts most of his hair off, and comes home from school with odd injuries, including a bleeding ear.
Her concern is compounded when Saori finds her son in an abandoned waterway late at night, singing to himself “who’s the monster?”, and while on their way home, Minato throws himself out of the moving car. Distressed, Saori presses her son to explain what is going on until he admits that he has been bullied by his Japanese elementary school teacher Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama). Saori confronts the principal about the cruel monster bullying her son, but is frustrated by the school’s disingenuous apologies.
As the story returns to the burning building and unfolds from the perspective of the well-meaning Mr Hori, all is not what it seems. According to Hori’s retelling, he has been made a scapegoat by the school, despite his concerns that Minato is prone to violence, and is bullying his smaller classmate, Yori (Hinata Hiiragi).
The film culminates from the viewpoint of Minato and his tentative friendship with the quiet, effeminate Yori. As the two boys grow closer, Minato attempts to push Yori away. His self-hatred is evident when he cuts off his hair that was tenderly fondled by Yori. Their relationship has elements of wondrous fantasy, punctuated with discussions of the end of the universe and whether they will be reborn. The third act is the soul of the film, as the two young boys share a private world in an abandoned railcar.
Awarded Best Screenplay at the 2023 Festival De Cannes, Monster was written by Yuji Sakamoto, but it often feels like a tale by Kore-eda, as the film explores the director’s popular themes of the elusive world of young children. In fact, it is the first film that Kore-eda has directed that he did not write himself since his debut film, Maborosi (1995).
Monster confronts viewers with an ambiguous ending, leaving us to decipher the truth of who really is the eponymous monster, but perhaps the objective truth is there are monsters in each and every one of us.
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Monster is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.