‘Monster’ review: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest will leave you breathless

Hirokazu Kore-eda delivers an aching portrait that examines how little we know about one another — even those we love — in the emotionally staggering Monster.

The empathy that fuels Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest, the hauntingly beautiful Monster, is emotionally exhausting. A story of rebirth and the many painful ways a parent will never fully understand their child, no matter the love, the film is a shattering, quietly explosive expression of humanity. The story is able to find beauty in devastation and compassion in human error while told from three perspectives. Written by Yuji Sakamoto, the subtlety marries with the lush direction of Kore-eda which, in turn, creates something operatic in it’s approach. Despite the two small figures at the center, the immense heart of Monster and the emotional journey they take us on is overwhelming. Your heart will break then mend itself anew. 

Sakura Andō stars as a mother, Saori, who begins noticing her young son, Minato (Sōya Kurokawa), is behaving strangely. Upon learning that Minato’s teacher, Hori (Eita Nagayama), might have something to do with it, she demands the school faculty and supervisors acknowledge what’s going on. Her fears are further compounded by Hori’s belief that her son is a bully, especially to fellow classmate, Yori (Hinata Hiiragi). Of course, not all is what it seems as the layers of the story peel back piece by piece as we watch the perspectives of mother, teacher, and then, finally, son. 

Compared to Akira Kurasawa’s Rashomon due to its split narrative that tells the same story from three different points of view, Monster takes the perspectives and widens the gap between them further. Because all three players aren’t just witnessing a story, but a life, and that’s so much easier to misinterpret, project onto, and fail in telling. Saori loves her son — it’s undeniable. Andō makes for a formidable force of nature as she goes after the school legislature that dictates an attitude of protecting the school image at all costs. But even if she doesn’t fully understand the interiority of her son’s life, how could she? Her missteps are human. She worries when he comes home without a sneaker and when she catches him cutting his hair but laughs when Minato asks about rebirth. 

Hori, meanwhile, believes he has a handle on the landscape of a classroom. Minato is a bully — a “monster.” But it’s only when he realizes the inner pain the child has been harboring and learns more about Minato and Yori’s dynamic that he comprehends what the word “monster” might do to Minato, whose shoulders are heavy with an inner, inexpressible grief. Hori, too, is hit with a barrage of salacious, cruel rumors that speak to the hive-mind mentality of groups of children who’ve yet to learn the repercussions words and actions have. But his story, and the story of Minato and Yori, is made all the worse with the knowledge that the hands of adults have wreaked the most significant damage. 

It’s why the sequences from Minato’s point of view excel, though they need the build-up to further impress the sensation of breathlessness the final act grants us. Because once that perspective changes and we walk and take the world in through the eyes of these children, we’re in desperate free fall. The script by Sakamoto instills a mounting apprehension of some personal, cataclysmic event, dangling us over a cliff edge where the tension only eases by the miraculous joy found in the boy’s story. Together, Minato and Yori, in their make-believe home in an abandoned caravan, find the solace of youthful abandon. They play games, eat snacks, and ponder the many untenable what-ifs of innocence—the promise of youth before the tarnish of reality set in. 

“If only some people can have it, that’s not happiness.”

The elegance of the visual storytelling from Kore-eda’s direction, along with the cinematography by Ryuto Kondo, brings forth even greater feelings of sorrow. The greens of the forest suggest foreboding when seen through the eyes of the adults in contrast to the bright, sunlit beacon of hope it offers the kids. For Minato and Yori, the forest remains their safe haven and a place where they’re allowed to be young and free, untethered from abusive parents or plagued by self-doubt. The direction frames the two boys atop a fixture in a playground, their youth poised on top of the world with only skies and mountains ahead of them — endless. 

The editing, too, is superb, aiding the film as it pieces together a complete picture through the narrative and sonically as well. A pivotal moment with Hori is backed by brass instruments, which we don’t see until the third act in a sequence much less harrowing than the former. It’s the collision of worlds and mindsets, the innocence of children, and how quickly it’s stolen from them. 

But perhaps the most vital element of the film is the very heart of it, with two moving performances from Sōya Kurokawa and Hinata Hiiragi. They’re simply tremendous, delivering two of the very best performances from younger actors in ages. Their story aches with a steady, bruising pulse because these boys are so vibrant in their depiction, so alive and themselves in their moments together, that any threat to that happiness lands with greater urgency. 

The third act wounds with startling ambiguity. Bolstered by the yearning, whimsical score by master composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (which would be his last before his death,) the film’s thematic core frees itself in a dizzying downpour of emotion. From the very start, the film and, notably, protagonist Minato, has dealt with ideas of rebirth and what that means personally and spiritually. When he and Yori come across a dead cat, they question whether a “cat stops being a cat when it dies.” 

The grappling of corporeal self, seeking escapism, and the innocence of how these two boys shoulder those questions and the expectations of the world result in an ending of fitting transformation. No matter the takeaway of those last resounding moments, be it mournful, cathartic, joyous, or somewhere likely, in between, Kore-eda’s latest is a marvel. This coming-of-age journey of what it means to honestly know someone — if we ever truly can — and the burden of freely knowing and embracing oneself is riddled with melancholy but never hopeless. Anchored by a tender-hearted core, empathetic direction and narrative choices, Monster makes sure to let the light come in and the storm pass. What comes after the rain is up to interpretation — such is life.

Monster is now playing in limited theaters. Watch the trailer below.

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Images courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment