11. Monster, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
Monster will keep you guessing as who the titular monster is. This a three-act mystery film, switching POVs in a twisty fashion. It is the same thriller structure as one of my favorite movies, The Handmaiden (this blog's Movie of the Year, 2016). It invites you to question the motives of its protagonists, to wonder about everything you've seen. Is this all going to be a con within a con? How many layers of con is there really? It's a very slick concept for a movie. So who is the monster? Is it a creepy shifty teacher? Is it a school bully? Is it a wicked principal? Maybe the biggest twist of all is that Monster is not trying to trick you. The audience and the characters are so busy looking for the monster, they miss what's really happening until it is too late. We can all sense that something is wrong, just some monsters are too ingrained and too fundamental to ever be named.
The wildest place a thriller could go is where Monster goes - to not being a thriller at all. I'm going to have to tip-toe carefully here because this is a very under seen movie from 2023 and I don't want to spoil everything. (Forgive me if I do it anyway, just stop reading here if you're worried. SPOILER WARNING.) We get clever reveals, such as how a photo was posed for dramatic effect, revealing one character to be utterly cold-blooded. But the final act is not building the tension to a grand reveal, complete with a flashback of every point were the movie's sleight of hand misled us while the Saw theme plays. The final act switches genres entirely to a bubble of freedom and light, outside all the accusations and politics of the world we have seen so far. Monster has a horror title yet becomes very sweet.
Monster is set in a lakeside city in Japan, a place urban enough that our protagonists live in high-rise apartments, but their community is still closely-knit and gossip spreads quickly. It opens with the local brothel burning down, with rumors spreading that a middle school teacher, Michitoshi Hori (Eita Nagayama) was seen leaving with an escort. All the mothers of the students relish this juicy detail. Our first POV is Saori Mugino (Sakura Andō), a single mother raising Minato (Sōya Kurokawa), one of Mr. Hori's students. Weeks after the fire, Minato begins to exhibit strange behavior. He's old enough that he's developing a separate life away from his mother for the first time, and it is complicated by the boy's many secret worries. He's asking strange questions, he's collecting odd things, and he's going to abandoned places in the woods. Eventually Minato reveals to his mother that he's being hit and mocked by Mr. Hori. This is the first we hear of a recurring delusion in Monster that he believes his brain has been replaced secretly by a pig's brain, which Mr. Hori told him.
At first, Monster is more a bureaucratic drama with Saori stepping into the school, demanding an explanation. She is then met by an intense wall of over-dramatic apologies and politeness, none of which answer anything. It feels like a uniquely Japanese cultural concern, that you can bow so low in contrition that you can hide the truth written on your face. However, Saori's crusade against Mr. Hori will turn out to be a complete misdirection. Our next POV is Mr. Hori himself, who is a ridiculous, almost Ichabod Crane-like man, all skinny awkwardness. He's a harmless dope, trapped in the gears of a very public scandal. He's actually an interesting comparison to Saori, a child-like man unwillingly made the villain to a woman uncomfortable dressing in adult clothes, who acts more like a big sister with her son, Minato. These people are not villains, yet their search for one brings about a disaster.
In Monster is that the adults play the roles like children, and our main child actor Sōya Kurokawa, plays Minato very serious and stern. In some ways, that's what makes him the most child-like, he's trying to not be a kid. Whereas the adults might be imperfect people, they at least can be who they are. Minato is terrified of who he is. It is only in his the third act, Minato's POV, that Minato can be truly Minato, with his classmate Yori, (Hinata Hiiragi). They are together away from their parents, away from their classmates, finally free to be kids, and express emotions that they cannot otherwise dare say.
Monster is an extremely impressive movie. It is gorgeously shot. It achieves masterful performances from its entire cast, especially its two child leads. They have to carry a wide variety of feelings, probably ones they're too young to fully understand themselves. Selling a companion that could become even more is a lot to ask actors that young. Monster sees that the world needs monsters, and if there are none, it can engineer exclusions to create them. It has very important things on its mind about the limits of Japanese social norms. Something is very wrong even in well-meaning about their assumptions about queerness, and that is going to create harms that they'll never understand.
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