Opening Cannes competition on a reliable note, Monster (Kaibutsu) by Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu offers festival and art house audiences another involving story of human relationships struggling to survive in a conformist society.
Sakamoto Yuji’s rapid-fire screenplay braids together a series of everyday issues like the close friendship between two 5th grade boys, abusive teachers, school bullies and single parenting, giving them a life-and-death urgency that keeps the viewer deeply invested in the action. With all this going on, though, some scenes feel incomplete and the jumbled-up timeline unnecessarily complex. While this is a film sure to start a conversation, it may be about how to interpret the story’s ambiguities and dangling plot threads.
The veteran filmmaker, who won the Palme d’Or in 2018 for his deeply stirring social fable Shoplifters, shot his last film Broker in South Korea, where this master psychologist seemed less sure-footed. So Monster marks a welcome return to home turf. Set in an unnamed but typically scenic Japanese coastal town, only the occasional shot of a breathtaking bay locates the action somewhere special, in a place wide open to torrential rains, raging typhoons and mudslides. As in After the Storm, the story of a family is inextricably intertwined with natural disasters that provide an echo chamber for the characters’ emotional outbursts.
The first part of the film is straightforward enough and centers on Saori (the wonderfully down-to-earth Ando Sakura from Shoplifters), a working mom whose 11-year-old son Minato (Kurokawa Soya) is passing from the blind obedience stage to secrets and rebellion. Though she will later be accused of being over-protective, Saori actually seems to have excellent reasons to be worried about her offspring. He has taken to disappearing on his bike, forcing her to track him down at night on the spooky coastal road, and his increasingly erratic behavior includes jumping out of a moving car. Hovering over everything is a tall building that goes up in flames one night, casting suspicion on various characters and remaining a dire warning that serious matters are at hand.
From the few words that Saori can squeeze out of Minato, it seems that his teacher Mr. Hori (Nagayama Eita) has slapped him, made his ear bleed and called him a “pig-brain” in front of the class. But when she takes the case before the school principal, demanding Hori be fired, she gets an orchestrated run-around shifting the blame that is infuriating just to watch. But Saori is not the kind of person who gives up, and things quickly escalate.
Meanwhile, a lot of things at home don’t add up. Beside Minato’s surly secrecy, there is a missing sneaker, a fire-starter tool in his bedroom, coded homework. At school it becomes apparent the other boys are bullying Minato’s friend Hoshikawa (a moving perf from child actor Hiiragi Hinata) because he acts “like a girl”. Minato’s evaluation runs deeper: “He let go of all his strength and stopped feeling.” The little boy’s home life with his sadistic father is no better,
Shades of Lukas Dhont’s much-admired film from last year, Close: all the clues have been carefully dropped that the underlying issue is sexuality. Minato’s mom has promised his dead father she will look after him “until he gets married and starts a family”. She also says that girls don’t like boys who know the names of flowers, a rather surprising test for queer kids. (Hoshikawa ticks this box.) Even the Ur-symbol of the burning building once housed a hostess club, with its vague overtones of forbidden eroticism.
Suddenly we hear the wail of the fire engines once again. It’s not a new blaze, it’s the same fire, and the narrative starts over from teacher Hori’s POV. The well-cast Nagayama Eita, who has the open face of a comedian, now appears much less threatening as the truth begins to emerge. Also fleshed out is the tragic accident in which the principal’s grandson died. Veteran actress Tanaka Yuko turns this sad role into something delicate and meaningful.
While much of the original score (it is the last to be composed by composer Sakamoto Ryuichi, who died in March) uses simple notes of piano music to set the tone, there are also darker themes woven in, like the Christian dirge for the dead, Dies Irae. This alternation of the normal, everyday world and what lies beyond it contributes nicely to the film’s complexity.
Like all Kore-eda’s work, the film is beautifully shot both indoors and out, each shot resonating with simplicity and honesty. Mitsumatsu Keiko’s sets of Saori and Minato’s home have the stuffed, overcrowded feeling of small dwellings full of drawings tacked on the kitchen walls, while the school has a cool, modern feel that echoes Saori’s accusation (to the faculty) of inhumanity.
But it is in the striking exteriors that cinematographer Kondo Ryuto captures the force of nature and the elements feeding into the drama. It’s too bad the scenes of a typhoon wracking the town and a catastrophic mudslide are so short and perfunctory, because one would have liked to see more of these sequences, which feel too abruptly cut off even for narrative clarity. They create a tense, danger-filled ending, or perhaps one should say endings, because the audience is left to choose between two very different outcomes, depending on how symbolically you read the final shots. It is the one major weakness of a film with a great deal to recommend it.
Director, editor: Kore-eda Hirokazu
Screenplay: Sakamoto Yuji
Cast: Ando Sakura, Nagayama Eita, Kurokawa Soya, Hiiragi Hinata, Tanaka Yuko
Producers: Kawamura Genki, Yamada Kenji
Executive producers: Ichikawa Minami, Oota Toru, Tom Yoda, Ushioda Hajime, Kore-eda Hirokazu
Cinematography: Kondo Ryuto
Production design: Mitsumatsu Keiko
Costume design: Kurosawa Kazuko
Music: Sakamoto Ryuichi
Sound: Tomita Kazuhiko
Production companies: AOI Promotion, Bun-Buku, Fuji Television Network, Gaga, Toho Company
World sales: Goodfellas
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
In Japanese
126 minutes
