Hirokazu Koreeda’s films reap many rewards, if one is willing to take them at their own pace. The comparisons to Yasujiro Ozu are somewhat tired but also fitting—and much to the later Japanese filmmaker’s credit. His Monster (or Kaibutsu, in the original Japanese) is no different, though perhaps the more salient comparison would be to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, since both films fold differing perspectives over the same central event in order to gradually complexify both the story as well as the viewer’s initial impressions.
Monster is a masterclass in playing with the viewer’s expectations in this regard; from its very title, and from the rising action of the plot, one is primed to expect something sinister at work, as the son of single mother Saori Mugino (Sakura Ando), Minato, begins to exhibit strange behavior at home. He becomes withdrawn, and refers to himself as a “pig brain in a human body” and talks about being reborn in ways that seem to indicate suicidal ideation. After she finds him wandering through a dark tunnel, singing to himself, long after he was supposed to be back home from school, he flings himself out of the car on the drive back. An emergency MRI yields no cognitive abnormalities—what exactly is wrong with young Minato?
Perhaps there are issues related to his dead father, a former rugby player whom Saori still idolizes. But the main culprit is revealed to be Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama), one of Minato’s instructors at his elementary school. According to Minato, it is Mr. Hori who told him that he has the brain of a pig; and not only that, but a wound on Minato’s face is said to have been inflicted by Mr. Hori. Saori’s inquiries into the gym teacher’s conduct reveal both institutional cowardice—spearheaded by the elderly principal Mrs. Fushimi (Yūko Tanaka)—and snideness on Mr. Hori’s part; when he is brought to Saori by the school administrators to apologize, he seems to find the whole affair worthy of laughter, much to Saori’s shock and ire.
But not even an accusation by Mr. Hori that Minato is bullying a smaller classmate of his named Yori—therefore justifying the teacher’s forceful action(s), as well as his contempt for Saori’s parenting—is enough to quell the threat of scandal. When Saori manages to extract testimony from the positively cherubic Yori himself that Minato is not, in fact, a bully, the damage is done. A press conference pillories Hori as a child abuser, resulting in the loss of his job and a newfound status as town pariah.
At this point, the “monster” in question seems fairly clear: an adult male teacher has inflicted serious physical and mental injury on a student. Only scum would compel a child to believe himself subhuman, and make him bleed…but what about Yori? Why is there a cigarette burn on his arm, which he tries to hide from Saori when she comes calling? And why hasn’t the expulsion of Hori satisfied Minato in any meaningful way? Why does shame still cloud his being?
A heavy thunderstorm rocks the town, and Saori realizes Minato is not at home. He has, for whatever reason, ran out into the increasingly flooded streets. When Saori braves the rain to search for him, her story ends, and the hapless Hori’s begins—with the burning of a hostess bar which he is known to frequent, and which kickstarts the action for all the other dove-tailed POVs involved in Monster.
There is genuine pleasure in witnessing how the drama resolves its central mystery, so I’ll refrain from treating its pivotal twists and turns. Spoilers aside, Monster is a fine entry in a career littered with first-rate films. While likely not in the same league as Koreeda’s 2008 masterpiece Still Walking, his keen deployment of subtleties is unambiguously present a decade and a half later. Though it should be said: Monster is the first film since his debut feature Maborosi in 1995 that Koreeda did not also write (though he is credited as its editor). Monster‘s screenplay comes courtesy of Yuji Sakamoto, a screenwriter most known in his home country for his work in televised drama.
And it is surely an excellent work (for which he won Best Screenplay at that year’s Cannes), from its ingenious construction on a formal level to the nuances written into each of the characters. There are no outstanding gems of lyrical brilliance or tour-de-force monologues, but the script is powered by its parallaxed perspectives, as well as poignantly brief exchanges and small lines seemingly tossed off-hand by characters that will come to have deeper significance, and real danger, down the road.
As mentioned before, special attention is paid to setting up a character or situation in a certain light—thus biasing an empathetic viewer in a particular direction—only for that characterization to be complicated, or even outright defanged, later on. This ties into the greater question that the film poses: how often is the “monster” in one’s life, family, community, etc. a scapegoat for the concatenation of forces, interior and exterior, one does not understand? Out of refusal, perhaps, out of shame or plain old ignorance; or sometimes these forces are simply too diffuse to properly reckon with, therefore necessitating the collective punishment of a more easily recognizable, and manageable, enemy.
Through its enfolded structure, Sakamoto’s script interrogates the social idea of the “monster,” which is the face given to what is unknown, or what is too disquieting to let oneself understand. While this may seem a banal truth, few films are as good as Monster in showcasing how interpersonal failures of communication can activate this age-old procedure in which even the innocent, and most harmless, are made to bear the weight of false guilt. Fortunately, Koreeda/Sakamoto are wise to not overplay the story’s universality with an undue grandeur, since its “smallness” lends to its effectiveness; though one gets the sense that this situation could be happening anywhere, at all times, so long as certain people feel inferior to, or estranged from, whatever image of themselves they are expected to uphold.
The ensemble acting is wonderful, though special attention should be paid to the child actors Sōya Kurokawa and Hinata Hiiragi, who play Minato and Yori, respectively. Monster hinges on their relationship, and how the two both deny and accept what they falteringly comprehend to be inevitable. They are affectingly convincing as guileless boys who, because of their innocence, become intimately, disastrously, familiar with the processes of victimization. Their conclusion, which is also the film’s conclusion, may strike a less forgiving critic as verging on mawkish, but thankfully the filmmakers provide enough ambiguity to resist a wholly simplistic take.
Ryuto Kondo’s cinematography is beautiful but Monster is less interested in visual brilliance than the drama precipitated, and driven, by its characters. Note, however, the interplay between bright/dark, hot/cold, fire and water, which the film juxtaposes for symbolic effect. It is no coincidence that Monster begins with conflagration and ends in a deluge.
There is a wonderful scene, though, in which Koreeda’s staging crams several bodies in one space, and Kondo’s frame, making Saori’s distressed visage appear hemmed in by their uncomfortable proximity. She is seeking answers, but those who are supposed to have them seem paralyzed by unspoken hindrances. When the shot is on Saori, their faces are hidden from view, and vice versa; so as the tension escalates, two perspectives are contrasted, and deftly visualized: 1) that of an individual butting up against a faceless, unempathetic bureaucracy, and 2) that of a group of educators stoically attempting to protect their organization from scandal, and from a lone actor who may not be in possession of all the facts.
It is through the interplay of such viewpoints that Monster achieves ambiguity (who is guilty, who is just?) and clarity, for when the parts are conjoined, however hard they clash, a better picture of reality emerges, capable of transforming monstrosities into much quainter figures than one’s framework had previously provided; or, at times, into potentially more insidious perils…
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