Monster

As a Regal Unlimited member, it’s always frustrating when films I’m anticipating hit all my local theaters except my local Regals. Monster — a film I’ve been looking forward to since its Cannes premiere — is an example of this, as it quietly released showtimes at my local AMC this week. However, given my love of modern master Kore-eda’s work, I knew it would be worth the extra trip and expense and bit the bullet in order to see it in a theater.

Monster is a film about perceptions, and the villains we make of people in our lives. The film follows three different perspectives on the same series of events. We see the same scenes multiple times, but because of the different points of view they follow, they often feel brand new. The series of events in question stem from a son named Minato telling his mother Saori that his teacher Hori has been hitting and harassing him. Saori then goes to the school to try and get justice. We see the story from Saori’s perspective, then again through Hori’s, and finally through Minato’s, where the truth slowly reveals itself to us. 

The script is incredibly clever with what information it feeds us and which it chooses to withhold. We don’t exactly know what answers we are looking beyond “is there truth to these claims”, and the skips in time create an endless possibility of new information that the film fully takes advantage of. Interestingly, this film isn’t written by Kore-eda like most of his directing efforts. Screenwriter Yûji Sakamoto brings new life to the director’s filmography, which is often accused of being repetitive. Monster plays with structure in a way Kore-eda’s work never has while offering a new perspective on childhood, a theme Kore-eda clearly resonates with.

While most of Kore-eda’s work deal with this theme in regards to the wonders of the naivety of childhood and preserving that, Monster deals with the delicacy of youth, and the dangers of it. So much of the drama of the film comes from misinterpretation rather than malice, which keeps any character from becoming the villain. After all, in a way they are all each other’s villain. By getting a window into each of their lives, we end up rooting for everybody. Unfortunately, the lengths the characters are put through are impossible to come back from. It makes the film an intentionally frustrating watch, as the true “monster” the film is dealing with is misinterpretation.

When dealing with child characters, the need for clear motivation becomes less integral, as kids are often very fluid in what they believe as fact. As such, in Monster, there is a well-balanced and authentic mixture of obvious motivations and ambiguous ones that service the themes of the film wonderfully. The child performances are also some of the best in recent memory, as their naïveté is believable and even likable despite the severity of its consequences. It’s a delicate balance the film is maintaining, and as the momentum builds us to the character’s ultimate fate, we reach the film’s only major issue. 

Up until the ending I was completely immersed in the lies and seemingly inconsequential truths that were holding up these characters' lives. The patient revelation of what is really happening versus what we’ve been previously told is incredibly written, performed, and especially edited. Seeing the same scenes again never feels boring, while new scenes serve like treats to the viewer in understanding the story more. Once we reach the end, however, the point of this journey becomes muddled somewhat. While I am still glad I went on this ride, I do question why Sakamoto and Kore-eda took the direction they did. It unfortunately feels outdated and cheapens the rich journey we were taken on. It doesn’t ruin the film, but it does hold it back from perfection. Yet at the end of the day, Monster serves as another great entry in Kore-eda’s catalog and as one of the best films of the year. If it is playing in a theater near you, it is absolutely worth the trip. 

8/10