As per the MIFF guide: “Rural tween Minato has been acting strangely since his dad’s death: drastically cutting his hair, leaping from a moving car, claiming his brain has been replaced with a pig’s. When he comes home from school injured, his mum Saori is convinced something more sinister is at play and sets out on a relentless campaign to expose Minato’s teacher, Hori, as the culprit victimising her son. In turn, Hori claims Minato is a bully. But Minato has his own perspective, focused on his new friend, with troubles of his own.”
“Monster” is popular and successful Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda's latest film, returning to his home country after his previous film, the South Korean drama “Broker”. When initial word broke about the film, it was described as something a little different from Koreeda, who is known for his family dramas, but little else was said about the project. It was one of the hot ticket films at MIFF this year, with all of its sessions selling out, and if word of mouth is anything to go by, it was greeted very enthusiastically. Many times I heard patrons, when asked what is the favourite thing they have seen at MIFF this year, responding with “Monster”, so I give you fair warning that this review will be of a contrary opinion, as sadly, the film fell totally flat for me. I will admit that it is an incredibly well made film, with some excellent performances, but outside of this I had a lot of issues with “Monster” that I couldn't get past.
The main issue I had with the film was the structure of it; the way the story has been told. It is a film that has been broken into thirds where each time we go back to the same beginning (a large fire burning in Tokyo, where a well known brothel exists on one of its floors), except from a different character's point of view each time. The first being Saori's, the mother's, point of view, then the teacher Hori's, before finally we get the point of view from Minato himself. In each segment, some scenes are repeated but like I said from a different point of view, but a lot of the time we see different moments involving these characters that begin to fill the timeline and picture fully. Personally, I love the exploration of time in cinema, and seeing scenes repeated from different points of view, but the way it was handled in “Monster” was both confusing and frustrating. My first point of frustration was not being able to determine whether what we were seeing in each segment was the “truth” or only that person's truth. Akira Kurosawa's “Rashomon” is probably the most well known film of this type, and it is very easy to tell that each segment there is only true of the person telling it. With “Monster” because certain scenes fill in the gaps of moments that the other participants wouldn't know about, I assumed that the whole thing (all three parts connected) was to be considered the truth. However the problem with this is in the inconsistencies in the portrayal of Hori between the first and second segments. He comes off very uncaring, flippant, angry and even belligerent at times in his interactions with Saori, which doesn't come close to the type of teacher he is portrayed as in his own segment. He is so caring, worrying about his student's well being and learnings. He cares more about them, then the politics of the school he works at, where they try to get him to apologise for something he may or may not have done, just so it causes them less issues to deal with. Things get more murky after he is accused of abuse towards his students and the way he then struggles to deal with these accusations. He is, rightly, devastated and without spoiling anything it gets pretty dark in regards to his mental state, but the way this is quickly turned around in the third segment, Minato's point of view, to build towards the film's finale, just felt so false. I did not buy it at all! (It is really hard to talk about without giving away the main secrets of the film). The character arc of Hori just did not feel realistic from a humanistic sense, rather it seemed to function in a way that serviced the film's story instead.
The inconsistencies of this also carry over into the performances in the film too, which to be fair are mostly excellent. Sakura Ando is very good as Saori, who at times comes across as a fun and carefree mother, but is very serious when her child's health (both mental and physical) is threatened, and will not suffer fools lightly. She is great, but I think Eita Nagayama as Hori gives the best performance within “Monster”; he is outstanding, particularly in the segment from his own point of view. What I felt was strange though is how different he performs Hori in the first segment compared to the second; it is so different which further blurred the line of what was meant to be reality and truth in this film.
My biggest issue with “Monster” though comes down to the final segment when it all comes out, and we learn what is really happening. Again, I cannot spoil this moment because it is essentially the point of the film, but when I finally learned the “truth” behind Minato's ordeal and why he was behaving like so, I was made so angry by it all. Firstly, I felt that the story was strong enough on its own, without it being watered down via the fragmented way it was told, which by the end only comes across as a narrative gimmick. This fractured narrative takes away all of the story's potential and power, but worse (and this is what upset me the most), it trivialises it. Worse still, is when I thought back to everything that had occurred prior and what was being insinuated (both in story terms and the type of film that it was pretending to be), I was disgusted by how disingenuous and exploitative it was in regards to the subject matter. It was like the filmmakers did not want to be upfront with the type of story they were telling and decided to hide it behind a very exploitative title and disgusting tagline (“Who is the monster?”). I am not sure why I have reacted so negatively against this, as my concerns around “Monster” have not been echoed by anyone I have spoken to or I overheard talking about the film during MIFF, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. This is a shame too because from a technical standpoint, “Monster” has been extremely well made. It is one of the most beautiful films, pictorially speaking, from Koreeda's filmography, due to the stunning countryside cinematography from Ryuto Kondo, and has a really lovely score from the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto, who sadly passed away in March of this year. It was to be Sakamoto's final score of his career, but he goes out on a high, as it is quite beautiful particularly towards the end of the film when the music really takes over and helps to portray the kid's emotions.
Briefly, I want to make mention that “Monster” is the first time since way back in 1995, with his debut film “Maborosi”, that Hirokazu Koreeda did not write, or at least contribute to, the screenplay of one of his films. Now maybe this is just me looking for a way to give an out to a great director, but with the screenplay not his own, maybe he felt compelled to keep the way the narrative had been (ineffectively) structured (although, he did edit “Monster” himself), or keep the inclusion of certain clunky moments that he wants audience members to remember between each segments, which come across more like “signpost” moments rather than organically integrated into the story. I just think it is interesting that Koreeda has been able to successfully make two films in different languages he does not speak, but still had a hand in the scripting duties, but has failed here with a film he didn't write at all. Like I said, maybe I am trying to give him an out, but it just didn't feel like a normal, humanistic screenplay that is the norm for Koreeda.
Overall, I was seriously disappointed in Hirokazu Koreeda's “Monster”, but my opinion of the film is definitely not the consensus one. Whilst the film is well acted, beautifully shot and has a lovely score, I thought the story itself was very poorly handled and found it very exploitative in regards to the main themes of the film once they are revealed (the fact that “Monster” won the “Queer Palm” at Cannes is a very big clue!). The fractured, fragmented narrative only served to take the film's power away and because of this I felt the story just did not come together to make a complete satisfactory whole. “Monster” was a massive disappointment.
2 Stars.
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