“Who’s the monster?”
Kore-eda Hirokazu has always been a filmmaker who zeroes in on snapshots of lives being lived. He explains himself how the viewers could imagine what happened before and after, and while he might not necessarily call his previous films storytelling, some will respectfully disagree. For Monster, Kore-eda collaborates with screenwriter Sakamato Yuji for the first time, melding their similar styles together in perfect symbiotic cohesion. Sakamoto’s characters and dialogue make us feel like Kore-eda’s presence in the blueprints reverberates through as if it were one voice. In many ways their fruitful collaboration mirrors the subjects of Monster, two separate individuals whose passion unites them, however unlikely it may seem.
Mugino Minato is a young boy raised by his mother Saori, some time after his father has passed. Minato is reserved and Saori often finds him hard to read. During the opening of the film, a blaze destroys an entire building just blocks away from their apartment. This begins the story not necessarily at the beginning but for Minato’s mother, it’s the best place to start. Saori learns from her son that something unsavory is happening to him at school. He communicates that his teacher is verbally and physically abusing him, and in a controlled rage, Saori visits the school to get answers.

Saori’s investigation for the truth surrounding her son’s abuse takes a bizarre turn when no one at the school seems concerned about taking action or setting the record straight. Sakamoto’s own journey into the lives affected by this event hinges on the results of knowledge and gossip, that which is shared openly and hidden from others. After some time, a typhoon threatens the safety of their town and precautions are set into place. But once the storm arrives and Minato is nowhere to be found, Saori has limited resources with which to find her son. Minato has confided in another student at his school, who is known by some around town and school but not by his mother, making Minato’s disappearance more puzzling and distressing. This typhoon becomes a symbol of Minato’s place in the world, a curtain of chaos that obscures his understanding of how consequences ring with a dead finality in the adult world.
The structure of Monster becomes something of a marvel once Saori traces the threads she’s given to solve her son’s mystery. When the narrative takes us back to previous events through the perspectives and experiences of two different generations, it immediately surpasses its gimmick in a way showing how ripples in a pond are made based on unfounded decisions of previous ripples, and the misunderstandings that lead to points of harsh irreversibility. It’s here that Kore-eda’s thematic limitations are expanded on by Sakamoto’s writing, where there is in fact a before and after for each character’s moments. The nonlinear intersection of them solidifies how we know one character feels, learning later what the other is going through.

Monster reaches different heights of emotional tenderness and tumultuousness, each moment echoing the previous and adding to a lasting intensity and as it reaches a critical point gives us a release of emotions as if they’ve been swirling in a pressure cooker until the last minute. Kore-eda and Sakamoto’s combined effort is magnificent, drawing on a childhood innocence that is universally relatable, especially when the adult world spins out of control outside the idea of independence, the only quantifiable thing children begin to understand on their own. There are some things we may all remember from our childhoods that have never been shared with our closest loved ones. They may still be secrets to us now. Sakamoto writes secrets like these into his characters to heartbreaking effect, and Kore-eda’s manifestations mold them into people we know and perhaps have been (if not are).
With Sakamoto and Kore-eda’s remarkable skill of creating a small community that crosses so many emotional borders, the musical score from Ryuichi Sakamoto becomes the proverbial icing on the cake. His strokes of piano keys over the vistas of Nagano prefecture, a building burning to cinders, and an abandoned long-derailed train car somehow evoke calm and a centeredness that links the film’s often chaotic imagery together. The score becomes an elegy of sorts for Sakamoto and where his scores have traversed great cinematic landscapes and their respective timbres, it’s his work for piano that resonates so strongly perhaps because of its purity and simplicity. It becomes the voice that transmits his peaceful stirrings within the ideas of tranquility and discordance, demonstrating the dichotomy Minato exemplifies within the typhoon of his own existence. The score puts us squarely within his experience, even if we don’t follow him until a later point in the film.

It very much feels like we are with Minato all this time, looking out towards a world easily consumed by panic and judgment that from a distance feels separated from a reality that exists in frightening vibrancy at the epicenter of disarray. At its most vulnerable points, Monster becomes about the formation of a soul before it knows the repercussions of the lives that touch it. Minato learns what this means for himself and others, but never at the behest of discipline. He may not realize it while he’s young, but Minato will have to break the barrier of calm to go noisily into that eye of the storm he has seen so often from afar. And Kore-eda along with Sakamoto have created a monster in the form of Minato, that is to say, a monster whose sole concern has always been for humanity and faces monumental misunderstanding in the wake of his own actions. It’s a beautiful tale you won’t soon forget.
Monster is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Well Go USA. The film will expand nationwide on December 15, 2023.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoviKDGaLao]
At its most vulnerable points, Monster becomes about the formation of a soul before it knows the repercussions of the lives that touch it. Minato learns what this means for himself and others, but never at the behest of discipline. He may not realize it while he’s young, but Minato will have to break the barrier of calm to go noisily into that eye of the storm he has seen so often from afar. And Kore-eda along with Sakamoto have created a monster in the form of Minato, that is to say, a monster whose sole concern has always been for humanity and faces monumental misunderstanding in the wake of his own actions. It's a beautiful tale you won't soon forget.
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GVN Rating 10
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Fritz is an avid film watcher, blogger and podcaster. You can read her words on film at letterboxd and medium, and hear their voice on movies, monsters, and other weird things on Humanoids From the Deep Dive every other Monday. In their “off” time they volunteer as a film projectionist, reads fiction & nonfiction, comics, and plays video games until it’s way too late.