Monster (Kaibutsu) (12A)

Single mother Saori Mugino grows increasingly concerned about her young son Minato following the death of his father. With considerable patience and tenderness, Saori teases the truth out of her boy: he is being cruelly mistreated by class teacher Michitoshi Hori. Saori demands decisive action from the school and she is awestruck by the reluctance of principal Makiko Fushimi to admit fault or punish Mr Hori.

LondonNet Film Review

Monster (12A) Film Review from LondonNet

There are two sides to every story. Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda spoils us with a crucial third perspective to his exquisitely delicate drama about abuse at a Tokyo elementary school. Lessons learnt from Kore-eda’s earlier work remind us that human relationships, even the messy and toxic ones, cannot be adequately sketched in black and white. Redemption, regret and compassion exist in shades of grey and the film’s title shapeshifts in meaning as key events replay through fresh eyes, supplanting rumour and insinuation with undeniable cold, hard facts…

Screenwriter Sakamoto Yuji demonstrates restraint in his carefully structured approach, anchoring characters’ recollections to the same event: fire engines racing to a blaze at a Tokyo hostess bar. One stray spark of suspicion can create a raging wildfire that decimates communities and reduces childhood innocence to smouldering embers. Kore-eda has an enviable track record of coaxing powerhouse performances from child actors. The young leads in Monster, Soya Kurokawa and Hinata Hiiragi, shoulder the film’s emotional weight with disarming ease. Both deliver heartbreaking, naturalistic performances that nimbly and sensitively traverse difficult subject matter. Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who won the Oscar for his orchestrations to The Last Emperor, conjures an elegiac score – a final act of creative alchemy before his death last year. The film is dedicated to his memory.

Single mother Saori Mugino (Sakura Ando) grows increasingly concerned about her young son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) following the death of his father. She discovers clods of mud in the boy’s water bottle and he returns home from school with only one trainer. With considerable patience and tenderness, Saori teases the truth out of her boy: he is being cruelly mistreated by class teacher Michitoshi Hori (Eita Nagayama). Saori demands decisive action from the school and she is awestruck by the reluctance of principal Makiko Fushimi (Yuko Tanaka) to admit fault or punish Mr Hori.

“We have confirmed there was contact between the hand and the nose,” the principal reads from carefully worded notes held by the vice-principal (Akihiro Tsunoda). Honouring a promise made to her late husband, Saori fights to protect Minato. As the case attracts media interest, events rewind, chronicling distress through the eyes of Mr Hori and then young Minato and classmate Yori (Hinata Hiiragi).

Monster is a haunting ode to the hushed secrets of childhood, which sustains tension and discomfort for more than two hours by cleverly staggering knockout blows between chapters. The tricksy conceit subtly shifts our sympathy as preconceptions and assumptions come back to bite us, drawing blood and tears. “Happiness is something anyone can have,” principal Fushimi counsels one of her young wards. The conflicted and misunderstood characters of Kore-eda’s extraordinary film would respectfully beg to differ.

– Jo Planter