Monster  怪物 (2023) Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda [Chicago International Film Festival 2023]

The film begins with a single mother named Saori Mugino (Sakura Ando) and her son Minato (Soya Kurokawa). We join them in watching the striking sight of a building violently burning down on a placid night-time skyline. This ominous image presages a shift in their relationship as Minato becomes incommunicative and begins coming home late from school, sometimes with bruises, one time cutting his hair and another relaying a pig brain insult he heard. His behaviour becomes increasingly bizarre and culminates with him disappearing at night and, after Saori tracks him down to drive him home, throwing himself out of her moving car. This rupture in their intimate bond seems to be the result of Minato reacting to bullying but when Saori finds a likely culprit for Minato’s problems, his teacher Michitoshi Hori (Eita Nagayama), things get more complicated.

By the time we meet Hori, a 30-something new hire at the school, he has already been linked by salacious gossip to a hostess club that was in the blazing building seen at the beginning of the film and so when Saori hears that he insulted and struck Minato, the assumption that he is the villain seems a likely fit especially as his insincere behaviour and that of the school staff at a meeting suggest a cover up. Events take a turn after Hori accuses Minato of tormenting another boy, a loner named Eri (Hinata Hiiragi), and the film proceeds to retell events from Hori’s point of view before switching perspectives again for more reveals.

Monster revels in replaying events for these reveals. Sakamoto’s use of a Russian doll style narrative structure that burrows down to an ultimate truth allows him to manipulate audience interpretation of the story quite often and quite handily. As we develop a more nuanced understanding of events, we gradually key into themes/ideas of misapprehension and eventually understand how it led to a cascade of emotional and physical violence that surrounds Eri and Minato. This only fully comes into focus once the puzzle-like pieces of Sakamoto’s story slot into place and there is a measure of satisfaction in watching. However, it can be said that while the manipulation of perspective shifts makes for a somewhat compelling low-key mystery, it also has the effect of making the film feel far more artificial and obvious than the more involving and intimate real-time approach Kore-eda typically scripts like in After the Storm (2016) or the more drawn-out process of understanding in The Third Murder (2017).

Whatever my scepticism, the story still works and ultimately gains from this structure. Every character’s behaviour becomes less obtuse and more emotionally compelling with each retelling of events because the theme of loss is consistently runs in everyone’s background. Death, divorce, societal status, family. All people are convincingly shown to be made fragile by life’s complications and, thus, there is a sense of vulnerability to everyone, that Kore-eda is using the story structure to show how we can never really know another person by compassionately showing that the characters are fighting to save what is left of themselves after losing something important. Sakamoto’s commitment to fleshing out their individual backstories deepens our interest in the story past the mystery but what keeps us truly emotionally connected is the execution.

Kore-eda’s stylistic bent for naturalism in look and acting is in full effect regardless of the narrative tricks. It is this that deepens our investment in events as the characters feel real and easy to empathise with. Sakura Ando brilliantly conjures up the figure of a mother who is seemingly laidback but is actually tuned in. She approaches each family scene with a shining joviality that radiates the warmth and support designed to give her kid confidence. This makes her fiery mama bear act  when she seeks to defend her boy more impactful as the contrast shows the depth of her worry over her son’s fate. The ability to create this contrast means she really imbues her character with a sense of panic and loss over her son’s changes and the gives the film emotional freight. Meanwhile Eita Nagayama is perfectly pitched as a heartless cynic at the start but becomes surprisingly sympathetic as a hapless man losing touch with reality as the truth gets twisted and events spiral out of control. He taps into rising levels of exasperation that would be comical if his situation wasn’t so desperate and we get a sense of that giddy madness that desperation brings from his later act. If the kids don’t have as much  to do as the story wilts away, they are still sympathetic with their earnest and upbeat approach to their interactions. They have the appropriate level of impact at the end but it is the travails of the adults, the lengthiest sections, that affected me most.

Unlike other Kore-eda films where the adults are painted as uncaring or self-absorbed, what is different here is that they are all trying to save someone and their mistakes cascade from that basic sentiment. It struck me while thinking about the film in the weeks that followed viewing it and it made me emotional to think of. Granted, a few are trying to save themselves but the desire to protect a son, a student, a partner, it stands in contrast to the myriad of failing father and mother figures Kore-eda has created like in Still Walking (2008) where two are hung up over the death of someone to the extent that they neglect the people around them. In Nobody Knows (2012), nobody cares that the kids have been abandoned because the fathers don’t want the responsibility. In Distance(2001), people in an atomised society have drifted apart into the clutches of a cult.

Perhaps Monster belongs in the category of the more hopeful Kore-eda drama. In Like Father, Like Son, the principal protagonist has to overcome his prejudice to become a real father to his son and the final result is heartbreakingly beautiful. In Kiseki (2011), Our Little Sister (2015), and Shoplifters (2018) children and adults do their best to live strongly and make the patchwork families that help them overcome hardships. In Monster, the kids display resilience in the fact of awful terror and even when control is taken away from them, they have a heartening optimism that belies the social horror of the early perspectives of the film and so the film ends on a moment of hope, a beautiful dash through a rain-soaked field after the storm (nice visual metaphor/call back to earlier work).

I think as I write this, I’ve come around to appreciating how this is a good film. The story is basic but works most effectively with this structure. There is an open ending that leaves so many threads dangling but it is effective as we are left with our own perspective rather than having one imposed and it suggests a endless possibilities that the characters want to grasp on to rather than a final closure.

As the story is put together we find that the monster referenced in the title takes many forms because we have seen it effectively exhibited by different characters and seen it make them make mistakes: a rumour, prejudice, bullying, toxic relationships, fear. All of these feature as the fuel of the films engine, a drama about misapprehension and ignorance but for all of this negativity, the film has a deep humanity for its characters as Kore-eda allows them the time and space to make mistakes and try to make up and constantly shows how the process of making up is the strengthening of human bonds, that element of never abandoning each other. It is a reminder that love takes the form of constancy and support. It doesn’t have to be contingent on blood or legal relations, people just have to be there for each other and that is a powerful message.