MONSTER (2023) - Mark Reviews Movies

Monster, Well Go USA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 20, 2023

Director Kore-eda Hirokazu brings his humanist lens to a grounded and enthralling mystery in Monster. The story revolves around a mounting scandal at a school, uncovers three distinct perspectives on those events, and gradually unravels an underlying tale of emotional power, moral certainty, and political vitality. It's a film that seems rich from the start, as questions of truth and trust subtly reveal themselves amidst the character-focused drama, but Sakamoto Yuji's screenplay only grows in complexity as it progresses—until the film arrives at a truth of human nature and decency so simple that it cannot be ignored.

Somewhere in Japan, Saori (Ando Sakura) is a widowed single mother, raising her pre-teen son Minato (Kurokawa Soya) as best as she can. Things seem as fine as they can be, too, with the boy still grieving a father he never really knew, hoping to live up to the standard the man has left behind, caring for his mother to the best of his own abilities, and wondering if his dad has been reincarnated. For her part, Saori works and keeps the house in order, and she pays attention to her son's well-being.

That's why she notices that Minato's behavior starts to change in strange but initially subtle ways. He starts asking about hypothetical science experiments of transplanting a pig's brain into a human. His water bottle is filled with dirt and some strange, hard, and unidentifiable object, which Minato simply says was part of a science experiment. At one point, Saori runs off to the store and returns home to find her son still leaning forward in his chair, reaching for an eraser that he dropped just before she walked out the door.

Worse, Minato comes home from school with random injuries, mainly bruises and a cut on his ear, and the boy won't say anything about how he obtained them or why the previously curious, talkative, and energetic kid has grown so quiet as of late. Something must be happening at school, and eventually a name emerges: Hori (Nagayama Eita), Minato's homeroom teacher.

There have been rumors around town about this man, namely how he was seen with a woman from a local hostess bar. People paid attention to that, because it's perceived as distasteful for a teacher to participate in such activities, let alone to make them public. Plus, Hori was spotted by some of his students with the woman on the night that bar burnt down in an apparent act of arson. Beyond that, there's just something odd and slightly creepy about the guy's demeanor, wide but empty smile, and status as a loner.

The screenplay is divided into three sections, with the first one taking the point of view of the mother, the second digging into the lonely life of the accused teacher, and the third offering a perspective that will remain undisclosed here. This is a mystery, after all, that jumps around in time, showing us events as one character sees them, only to backtrack and play out the missing gaps of knowledge as one of those other characters witnesses or experiences it.

In addition to directing the film, Kore-eda also serves as its editor, quite skillfully using sound, imagery, props, and even clothing to keep us fully aware of where we are in the narrative's timeline—or providing a bit of surprise, when necessary, to discover some sort of cause-and-effect progression that we might not have considered. It's a significant and wholly impressive feat, considering the attention to detail required of the filmmaker in the planning, staging, and cutting of the entire project. It's little wonder Kore-eda, who clearly understands the rhythm of this story as much as its emotional core, would only trust himself with the final assembly of the film.

So much of the impact of it, after all, is in what is revealed and when, what is hidden and why, and how both the characters' actions and secrets say an equal amount of who these people are, what truly matters to them, and how much they struggle with being honest about both of those things. For Saori, she is Minato's mother, first and foremost, and her main drive is ensuring that her son is protected from harm.

We understand that fully and with little work on the filmmakers' part, because Ando's subdued performance is filled with such quiet ferocity when her complaints about the teacher are mostly ignored by the school's principal Fushimi (Tanaka Yuko). Is this some sort of cover-up, and if it is, how can Saori cut through it to achieve any sort of justice for her son?

That's only the first part of this story, though. The second follows Hori in his determination to be a good teacher, as well as his sad and lonely life at home, as both are upended by an accusation of abuse that he privately, emphatically denies—but must suggest as a misunderstanding to the mother. From his perspective, Minato is no innocent, especially when it comes to his actions toward Yori (Hiiragi Hinata), a boy of smaller stature than his classmates and who is taunted as an "alien" by his peers. Minato always seems to be around whenever the bullying against Yori becomes especially bad.

All of this is vital, even if some of it seems like a deflection from the real truth of who Minato might be, how he has or hasn't changed, and what the cause of his erratic and increasingly dangerous acts could be. On the one hand, the information pieces together a complicated puzzle, not only of the case in front of us, but also of human behavior, of social expectations, and of how people learn to doubt, dismiss, and even disdain themselves.

More to the point, the contradictory perspectives point at something else. Everyone is so caught up in their own problems and trying to push the blame (The word "monster" is aimed at various individuals and groups several times here) that no one even considers someone else's point of view or, for that matter, the truth that's right there to be found if any of them did. Monster gets at that truth, as well as deeper ones of the human heart and of a particular failing of Japanese law and society, with a fine sense of dramatic mystery and an even more notable degree of compassion.

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