Monster [2023]

 Monster – Kore-eda’s first film in Japan since his feral found-family masterpiece Shoplifters, having made The Truth in France and Broker in South Korea since then – is a sensitive and delicately-strung queer coming-of-age film. Though his first exploration of this topic, it felt connected to the rest of his canon as he’s made multiple films on social outsiders and tangled human relationships both centred around kids and featuring them in significant roles. He crafted this like a three-act play, wherein “Rashomon Effect” is resorted to in showing the same chain of incidents from three different perspectives. However, while the celebrated Kurosawa work demonstrated the fallacy of an objective truth and posited the co-existence of multiple variants of it, here the objective was decidedly simpler, viz. to clarify what actually happened through revelation of new information from each subsequent POV. While this intricate plotting device added an air of unfolding mystery to the proceedings, Kore-eda’s inclinations for sentimental flourishes (and contrivances) were detrimental to its cinematic integrity on occasions. The evolving bond between Minato, an emotionally confused fifth-grader, and Yori (played with heartbreaking liveliness by Hinata Hiiragi), a sweet if oddball kid who’s continually targeted for his non-heteronormative behavioural manifestations, is first shown through the eyes of Minato’s single-mother (Sakura Andō) who believes that his son is facing abuse at school. The contexts and meanings, unsurprisingly, dramatically change when we then witness what had transpired from the perspectives of school teacher Hori (Eita Nagayama) and Minato, thus delivering overarching commentaries on pat judgements, bullying, dysfunctional relationships, and conformity. Renowned musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose resplendent piano compositions added emotional resonance to many of the sequences, sadly passed away before the film released.

Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda

Genre: Drama/Buddy Film/Coming-of-Age

Language: Japanese

Country: Japan