'Monster' is Heartbreaking

I haven’t had the feeling of being rendered speechless by a film very often. Monster (2023), directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu left me not only speechless, though. It left me filled with empathy, joy, and a profound sadness at the same time. 

The film is about a single mother, her son, his classmate, and their teacher and the effects of invisible ‘monsters’ on all of them. It’s hard to explain what this film is about without giving anything away, but it has a similar story-telling method as The Handmaiden, which tells the same event from three different perspectives. Other than that, though, watch it before you read the rest of this review. In fact, if you don’t finish this review, that doesn’t matter. Just go watch it. 

Perhaps it might be best for me to preface this review with my expectations of it for you to understand why I left the theater bewildered, wanting to sob my eyes out, and still somehow filled with an unexpected serenity. When I entered the theaters, I expected a suspenseful, mysterious, thriller film of some type. I expected to be scared, and when the film started with a discussion about a person with a pig’s brain, I thought, this is what this film will be about. It will be about a person with a pig brain who turns feral and starts eating people. I continuously expected this throughout the first third of the film, and was even at times disappointed with the calmness of the story-telling.

(SPOILERS NOW)

From the moment the film changed perspectives, however, I was on the edge of my seat. The first story of the mom made sense to me. In a deeply structured society, she had a role to play, a son to protect, and as a single mother she faced all sorts of discrimination and hardships. The scenes when she is asking the principal to answer to what has happened to her son breaks my heart but fills me with indignation at the same time: her son has been hurt, presumably by his teacher, and yet all she does is ask nicely? I was rearing for her to take a go at the principal, her son’s homeroom teacher, and everyone in the room watching her beg for justice. With the change of perspective, though, everything I believed before was suddenly different.

The story told from the teacher’s perspective brings up one question: why did the kids lie? The teacher, by all accounts, seems like a good person. When the accusations of abuse start coming up against him, everything seems like it starts to fall apart. His girlfriend leaves him, he loses his job, and he is forced to admit to something he didn’t do. The sense of hopelessness and helplessness he feels is terrifying to witness, because unlike the indignation I felt at the mother’s meekness, all I could feel was horror as the teacher was framed for something he didn’t do. How do you deny something when everyone believes you’ve done it? How do you deny something when all of your witnesses, who by all rights should be on your side, decide to turn on you? You’re in the middle of a circle, everyone who you ever trusted and believed throwing pointed accusations and furtive fingers at you. That is terrifying.

The story then shifts one last time. Suddenly, we are seeing everything from the perspective of the two boys who the story revolves around. The first, a young boy named Minato, hiding deep feelings and running from himself. The second, Yori, hiding from an abusive family and bullied at school, but accepting himself. The two of them form a secretive friendship, but Minato is scared of the reaction of the rest of their class if they found out the two boys are friends, and so the two of them play up a facade of Minato bullying Yori at school. That in it of itself is heartbreaking, the way that children feel pressed to deny their friends because of peer pressure. But it only gets worse. As we delve deeper into their story, the depth of their closeness begins to show, and soon it is clear that the two boys aren’t just friends to one another. They mean a great deal more to each other. Minato, though, is so deep in denial and self-hatred that, while he refuses to believe Yori has a pig brain and a disease the way Yori’s father tells him, he would rather lie and blame his teacher on the injuries he sustained than tell his mother that he was friends with Yori.

This is where the tragedy of their story begins. Yori is continuously bullied by his peers at school, and Minato joins them because he is afraid they will believe he is friends with Yori. Yori’s father forces Yori to tell Minato that he has a crush on a girl, and when Yori immediately afterwards tells Minato this is a lie, he is beaten up so badly he is nearly unconscious when Minato finds him again. The entire time, no matter what happens to him, Yori is a small ball of sunshine, seemingly happy and without concern in the world. It is heartbreaking to witness. He is so young, and he looks so young, yet already he is learning to cover up his injuries and deny everything. Time after time Minato hurts him because Minato is too scared to stand by his side, and yet each time afterwards Yori still welcomes him with an open smile. And while I want to hate Minato, I can’t. I know all too well the chilling fear that douses you head to toe at the thought of your real self being discovered by someone, especially someone who might hurt you with it. It’s one of the worst feelings in the world, and so while what he does to Yori is horrible, I can’t blame him at all. 

I want to cry thinking about it. What kind of world do we live in, where literal children have to lie, hurt, and suffer because they love someone? What kind of world are we building when anyone who is even a little different, like Yori, is picked and singled out and hurt again and again? I keep thinking that one day the world will get better. But I know this is a story that keeps happening again and again, and is happening right now and will happen again and again for a long time. When will it get better? 

At the end of the film, though, Yori and Minato survive the thunderstorm that is at the climax of all three stories, and they are free, out in nature, running and laughing together under the sun. It is a hopeful ending, and so despite all of the pain that I felt from their stories, in the end I couldn’t help but smile through the tears. They deserved the world, and though they are still not over all of their trials and tribulations, at the moment, at least, they have one another.

I’ve touched on the major themes of this film, but I also want to take a moment to acknowledge the actors and the cinematography. The actors are astonishing. The ensemble cast is filled with experienced actors, but the two child actors are truly capable of holding their own with this cast. Both Soya Kurokawa (who plays Minato) and Hinata Hiiragi (who plays Yori) are so perfect as their roles, and not once did I feel like they took me out of the story despite their youth. They made this story a million times more real, and a million times more painful because of how real it felt. And the cinematography! The contrast between when the kids are alone and when the kids are with the adults is stunning. There is a sequence of scenes when the kids are exploring the land behind and around the abandoned train car, when they end up at the top of a slide, and the way the sun and nature are shot makes everything seem okay and happy for a moment. A small respite from the darker, larger world.

Truly, this is an amazing film. If you haven’t seen it, please go see it. It is such a masterpiece of storytelling and such an astonishingly profound experience. I would recommend this to every single person.

Happy Thursday!