It’s one of the great structural templates in movies, hell in storytelling more broadly. Rashomon: the same story told from multiple perspectives, each informed by their own interpretations and biases, so that the truth remains elusive. The very idea of truth perhaps remains elusive. But whether or not you ascribe to that notion, some credence might be given to one truth being more valid than another. In Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster, unlike in the inimitable Rashomon, there is no suggestion anyone is lying or bending the truth in their account, merely that they only see pieces of it and are assessing from that as best they can. And where the centre of it concerns a young boy, the truth as he sees it is certainly the most valuable.
Monster is Kore-eda’s first movie since 1995 that he hasn’t written the screenplay for. That came from writer and playwright Yuji Sakamoto, who won Best Screenplay for it at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. And it’s a really smart take on that Rashomon formula, told in three perspectives that instead of outright contradicting, each build on the other, eventually revealing a different kind of story than what was presumed both by the other characters and the audience. It’s a glorious puzzle movie, and in Kore-eda’s masterful hands an intoxicatingly sweet and honest one at that.
At the centre of its maze is Minato Mugino (Sōya Kurokawa), a boy in the fifth grade who begins to behave erratically in the aftermath of his father’s death. Behaviour such as running off in the middle of the night to an old tunnel shouting about ‘monsters’, a fixation on some idea about a pig brain transplanted into a human, and one incident where he falls out of a moving car. Both his mother Saori (Sakura Ando) and his home-room teacher Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama) are concerned, but get very different impressions on the source of this behaviour.
For the early portions of the movie, Saori’s point of view takes precedence as she worries about her kid amidst hearing his teacher has been physically abusing him -taking her issue to the school itself and vociferously demanding accountability. It’s not till later that Mr. Hori’s perspective takes over, as we see a teacher try to make sense of a troubled boy seemingly arbitrarily targeting him as a scapegoat. And eventually, Minato’s own story is told, filling in the gaps of the prior two. And each rather organically washes into the other -it isn’t a Rashomon-like testimony; in fact relatively few scenes are shown twice. Instead what Kore-eda and Sakamoto do is simply widen the scope, and through this reveal new insight -such as Mr. Hori entering his classroom to find Minato in a fight with a boy Yori (Hinata Hiiragi), leading him to believe Minato has been bullying the smaller kid, when there’s more nuance just beyond his pale of vision. In breaking up this scuffle, Minato is hit accidentally -but the record of this supports Saori’s case against the teacher.
After her extraordinary performance in Shoplifters, it is a delight to see Ando reunited with Kore-eda, and she delivers another very powerful turn here, once again largely through her intense subtlety. Her deep concern for Minato expressed tangibly and beautifully in the gestures that he can’t read; and then her more passionate frustrations against the school officials have an aching desperation. They are so obtuse and can’t give her straight answers, much as they prostrate themselves before her, and from her (and the audience’s initial) vantage point, the accused Mr. Hori is a detached creep whose vague apology doesn’t mean anything. Nagayama though plays perfectly that ambiguity, in concert with the more rounded character we come to observe. Someone who cares a lot about education and his student’s well-being, whose life is upturned by the eventual scandal of this situation in very emotionally devastating ways. His crime may only be trying to unravel the mystery of Minato, same as Saori’s -it doesn’t make him the monster she sees him as.
The Monster of the title refers to an identity that is always shifting based on the perception we are privy to. And there is a monstrous character to the film, but it is none of the immediate suspects, including those who might apply the term self-deprecatingly. And there’s where the movie’s sombre emotional centre is, where the feelings and misunderstandings, and preoccupations click into place. When we learn the origin of that pig brain fixation, it is utterly heartbreaking. At a point it’s not hard to see where the story is going as pertaining to what the mystery around Minato and his feelings is (especially if you went in knowing one of the other Cannes awards Monster was up for). And it’s handled with just that endearing tenderness that Kore-eda does so well, paired of course with a little melancholy. The last portion of the film brings us into the eye of a child, and his perceptions in their simplicity are both charming and quietly devastating. But god, are there beautiful moments to be found too.
All three stories merge at one point: a great storm that Minato becomes lost in, with both Saori and Mr. Hori desperately endeavouring to seek him out amidst a mudslide at his favourite hideaway spot. It coincides with a kind of apocalyptic theology Minato has spent much of the movie mulling over -connected loosely with unresolved feelings over his father’s death. He is fascinated and somewhat obsessed with the idea of being reborn, in an academic sense towards his father but a deeply personal sense for himself -and this apocalyptic storm will bring about his rebirth, essentially an allowance for a certain freedom he has been denying himself. It is superficial but deeply meaningful, and Kore-eda illustrates it’s transpiring in the most immaculate terms. Minato’s story is a very tender one, and it would be easy to play it in a more opaque way, but Kore-eda (just as he did years ago in Nobody Knows) draws it in naturalistic terms of subtlety and implication.
Each character in Monster plays different parts through different lenses that may seem distinct but never contradict each other -nor do they pass poor judgement on the particular figure whom we’re seeing it through. That is such a rare thing, a show of trust and understanding that really epitomizes the kind of genuine beautiful empathy that Kore-eda is so adept at translating. From something that could have been so harsh or sordid comes a story that is unbelievably wholesome and endearing. And its ending is a note of such irresistible joy.
Monster has the distinction of being the final movie scored by the legend Ryuichi Sakamoto -it is some gorgeous work and a gorgeous film to go out on. And even if he didn’t write it, Kore-eda’s touch is as strong as ever. From a set-up that trains you to question the truth of what you see, it is an achingly palpable human drama. It really is a story about finding the truth, in its vivid and harrowing, personal and subjective shapes; separate and all together in sync.
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