As she sends her son Minato (Sōya Kurokawa) off to school, single mother Saori Mugino (Sakura Andō) warns the fifth grader not to cross over the line on the road. “Over the white line, you go to hell!” – a small joke between them from when he was younger.
“That was when I was a kid!,” he throws back at her over his shoulder. “You still are,” she mumbles quietly to herself as she watches him go.
But every kid has to grow up sometime. And for Minato, that moment is coming faster than either he or his mother might think. When Minato begins acting strangely, he eventually tells Saori that his teacher, Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama), is the one responsible. Mr. Hori hit him on the nose, he says. Mr. Hori said he has a pig’s brain. Mr. Hori called him a monster.
“Monster” is a coming-of-age story that takes a slightly different approach to what you might expect from the genre, exploring it through the lens of the film’s title and what, exactly, that word means. Yuji Sakamoto’s finely-tuned screenplay and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s empathetic direction take us through the same events from three different points of view, deftly weaving those perspectives together in a way that elevates a type of story that all too often falls into cliched territory.
“Monster” begins with an apartment fire, a memorable event that throughout the rest of the film signals a switch in perspective as we begin the journey over again. The film positions us in the minds of Saori, Mr. Hori, and then Minato, adding characters and dropping hints as to what exactly is going on along the way. Minato’s point of view is most crucial, particularly as his relationship with another student, Yori Hoshikawa (Hinata Hiiragi) – and the film’s queer undertones – begins to snap into focus.
Part of what makes “Monster” so immediately arresting is how effectively it positions you within the emotional state of each protagonist. As a screenwriter and as a director, it’s a tough line to walk, putting the audience firmly into that character’s headspace – blind spots and all – and seeding information throughout the film that must appear inconsequential at one moment, devastating at another. But Sakamoto makes that trick look seamless, especially when paired with Kore-eda’s visual prowess.
During Saori’s portion of the film, Minato’s strange behavior escalates quite quickly, and his subsequent explanation hits you like a ton of bricks. The bluntness with which that all unfolds throws the audience off balance as much as it does Saori. When she confronts the school administration about what’s going on, her frustration becomes restless and unmoored as the lack of answers they’re willing to give her. The audience sees characters through Saori’s narrow perspective – the administrators, awkward and anxious; Mr. Hori, arrogant and cold; Principal Fushimi (Yūko Tanaka), withdrawn and aloof. Her anger grows more untethered, until finally Mr. Hori reveals that he believes Minato is bullying another student – Yori. These shocking moments, the shifting perspectives, wouldn’t be near as powerful without Kore-eda’s sense of space. Visually, he’s masterful at letting the subtext of an image overtake you, from flashcards blowing in the wind to an open window in an empty classroom.
When I first saw this film, I became a bit trepidatious as the subject of both Minato and Yori’s queerness began to take shape. At first glance, this is a trope we’ve seen before – a young, queer kid (Yori) forms a secret friendship with a more popular, ostensibly straight kid (Minato), who then balks at the relationship when he discovers his friend’s sexuality. But the writing in “Monster” is far more layered than all that, and the performances from Kurokawa and Hiiragi are guided by a sense of their full characters rather than just trauma. In particular as Yori, Hiiragi delivers one of the most self-assured performances from a child actor in recent years. He has a curious confidence about him, aware of how he’s different from his classmates, but unafraid to reach out for connection even when there’s a possibility of hurt.
The exploration of what it means to be a “monster” threads through this three-pronged story. The word “monster” is something we use to separate ourselves from people we think are bad, to rob them of their humanity to make it easier to accept whatever it is they may have done. In Saori’s portion of the film, “Monster” primes the audience to do exactly this – it’s so easy to understand Saori’s fear for her son, easy to accept as it evolves into anger and hate. But as the film shifts in perspective, it starts to force us to look inward. What if it’s not so easy to separate ourselves from the monsters of the world? What if as much as we have the capacity to hurt people, whether by our own ignorance or on purpose, we equally have the capacity to help them heal?
It’s telling that the school principal – a character who Saori sees trip a small child in the grocery store, and one who might have accidentally done much worse in her past – is ultimately the character able to get through to Minato. Principal Fushimi might be the closest thing to a monster for most of these characters, but from the jump Yūko Tanaka’s haunting performance betrays something much sadder underneath her apparent ambivalence. And when Minato is convinced that he himself is a monster, maybe it takes another to offer true comfort.