Saori (Sakura Andô) is a single mother raising her son, Minato (Soya Kurokawa), after her husband passed away.  The two celebrate the patriarch’s birthday while elsewhere in town a fire rages at a popular bar in which rumors say Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama), Minato’s 5th grade teacher, frequents the club.  Hori’s relationship with Hirona (Mitsuki Takahata), a waitress at the bar, is not why he is being investigated by the school.  Minato claims that he is singled out and abused by the teacher, physically and mentally.  As more of this story comes to light from both parties, the key to understanding the truth of the matter lies with Yori (Hinata Hiiragi), a shy classmate of Minato’s. 

Hirokazu Kore-eda returns to Cannes with Monster, a coming-of-age drama that won Best Screenplay at the festival in addition to the Queer Palm.  A notable departure from the norm for Kore-eda, Monster was not written by him, rather Yûji Sakamoto provided the script for the 127-minute, Japanese-language film.  Release was handled domestically by Toho along with Gaga Corporation with Well Go USA Entertainment handling a limited theatrical release in the States.  Its American footprint was unfortunately minuscule, reaching at its height only 15 screens, but nonetheless, it is still a powerful work from one of our modern masters. 

The film opens with a portrait of anxiety and grief; a mother who has noticed a change in her son and is unable to help him because he is unwilling to let her in.  Andô is, in a word, phenomenal in the role.  She forges a great chemistry with Kurokawa and the two feel like they have a long history of getting by on their own as they navigate around the apartment together with total comfort and speak to each other with their own unique shorthand.  Because we are able to believe this relationship so immediately, we feel the same pains as Saori as she struggles to find out how to help Minato with whatever trial he is facing at school.  Kurokawa has his work cut out for him as the boy needs to present as reserved, but just below the surface are the large, bombastic emotions that he is struggling to contain. Sensing a change in her son, Saori is relentless as she presses the panel of teachers and Principal Fushimi (Yûko Tanaka) who offer just an apology without any resolution or real reaction to the claims she has brought to their attention.  With each attempt to move past this incident, our frustration with them grows with Saori’s, and it is important to note that Andô’s performance is perfectly tuned as she begins to grow more and more curt with the faculty so that we never stray from her side. 

Kore-eda, however, is not one to present such a simple, black-and-white narrative, and instead, the film adapts a Rashomon Structure, flipping back to the night of the bar fire, but this time we follow Mr. Hori.  Unfortunately for Nagayama, Sakamoto did a very good job at building Mr. Hori up as a pretty terrible person, so we are not very excited to be spending time with him.  Further, this middle act does little to really demand our investigation of the story at hand as it seems engineered to just flip our perspective by 180° without adding too much in the way of context.  He has the added burden of separating us from Andô and his account paints Minato as a bit of a brat which is a difficult pill to swallow even for an open audience as, by the nature of the story and Minato’s account being presented first, we will always hold Mr. Hori to a higher bar to change our initial perception of what happened.  It is a testament then to Nagayama that he is able to captivate and win over our sympathy by the end of his relatively short time in control of the narrative; only about twenty minutes against Andô’s opening forty. 

For the last hour, it seems that we will spend time with Principal Fushimi, but she only gives us a brief interlude before turning the story over to Yori, and almost immediately, the magic of the film returns.  We follow Yori, a smaller boy with a peculiar style who does not fit in well with the other boys, and his daily trials at the school.  His only relief comes in the moments he gets to spend with Minato, but in the dog-eat-dog world of middle school, this budding friendship is far from sacred and more fuel for the other boys to bully not only Yori but Minato as well.  The two form a very special friendship, and the film finally begins to embrace its queerness in this third act.  It is not a totally fair criticism of the film itself because had it not been recognized out of Cannes as such, the cause of Minato’s actions would be open for interpretation until the ending of the film, but that mystery is dispelled for audiences entering into the film with even just a passing awareness of the title who were not there on its premiere is a great disservice.  The onus then is on the audience to take the film at face value as the facts of the narrative are stated by Andô, recontextualized by Mr. Hori, and finally organized by Yori and it is a huge credit to Sakamoto who has written such a finely engineered script that we stay invested even if we know the root cause of Minato’s anxiety going in.  As for the third act, it is a delight to watch Hiiragi bounce through the frame giving Yori incredible resilience and never getting too bogged down or reacting to the torment of his bullies.  He has been through this whole routine before, even though changing schools, and most heartbreakingly at the hands of his father (Shidô Nakamura) who tried to beat his “pig brained” son’s very nature out of him that he never lets a little first on his desk get him down. 

Kore-eda’s film is deeply affecting but the director walks the fine line of intensity and restraint while Sakamoto’s script provides a salve as the boys begin to bond in a wonderfully decorated abandoned train car which they have claimed as their own private clubhouse. It is in this third act where the film can most easily be compared to Lukas Dhont’s Close (2022) which studied a similar dynamic of two young boys in Belgium, but to take such a broad similarity and pit the two against each other is hardly fair to earth filmmaker who strove to bring a tender and nuanced relationship to life on screen as each film is approaching the cruelty of youth and the bonds of friendship from different angles. Without projecting too tragic an arc for young Yori, Monster ends where Close opens, with two boys emerging from their sanctuary and running through a field, but that is where the similarities end. The two films are very much in conversation with each other but what Close is asking more intensely than Sakamoto is why is a closeness between two males seen as instantly queer whereas Sakamoto is asking, quite literally, what does it mean to be happy and why does it sometimes feel scary to follow our instincts?   

In the context of the films, it could be seen as the same question, but Sakamoto brings this question to light in many scenarios across his narrative.  The first is when Andô is with her son and mentions how he will grow into a man and start a family of his own, the greatest happiness she says, and the boy throws himself out of the moving car they are in, tumbling into the road.  Sakamoto never explicitly reveals all of the thoughts that haunt Minato, but the film deals with his questioning in a very frank and tender way, especially in his hesitation to speak to his father within earshot of his mother; the weight of pending adulthood definitely leans heavily on his young shoulders. He clearly cares for Yori, be it as a friend or a schoolyard crush or something else somewhere in that gradient, but whatever it is called, the important thing is that right now it makes him feel happy.  But that same happiness comes at a cost to the youth who finds himself at a constant crossroads when the other boys in class pressure Minato to join in and bully Yori.  Unable to bring himself to harm his friend, but for his own protection in the cruel social hierarchy of middle school he is unable to stand up for him either, he instead acts out, restoring to destruction which labels him as delinquent when Mr. Hori enters to see him tearing through the classroom.  Later, in one of the most poignant scenes of the film, he hugs Yori goodbye for the day in their train car, but this moment is cut short when he suddenly pushes Yori away. In Yori’s typical fashion, he does not react with violence or scorn, he offers Minato an understanding of an aspect of himself that he has not fully confronted yet. Minato is supposed to be the man of the house in his father’s absence, but has he let him down by having these feelings towards Yori that he himself may not fully be able to explain yet or understand. It is not until very late in the film that Principal Fushimi, handing the boy a trombone in the music room, teaches him to channel all those things that he cannot say into something creative, even if it is in the messy form of an off-key and belabored burst from a brass instrument. And how true is that! Often our biggest emotions are so strong that words will only limit them and the only thing we can do is “blow them all away” because to hold onto them would be a lie and a lie would rot us from the inside out; something we learn that the principal knows all too well. 

Admittedly, the script does not stand up to the same scrutiny here at the crossroads as it does when looking at the two main arcs – Minato’s relationship with Yori and his teacher – as we find out that Fushimi’s husband has taken the blame for the accidental death of their grandchild, and that the lie which Minato told about Mr. Hori, in an attempt to learn how to help Yori cope with his own bullies, has led to the teacher to thoughts of suicide.  It is a messy scenario all around. especially when examined in retrospect, but in the moment, it overflows as the tragic catharsis that Kore-eda is known for.  Life is messy and our actions have consequences, and while Monster does not have the fullest of follow-throughs on that, it is ultimately a film about acceptance of each other. It is careful not to explicitly say an acceptance of one’s faults, though the meaning is still there, because doing so would say that something intrinsically in one’s nature would be a fault, but it is saying that we are all human and we all deserve to be happy both with and for who we are, but as humans we also make mistakes and may misinterpret what we see and think we know. The onus is on us to seek understanding of each other. In the end, the film is fiercely supportive of the sanctity of oneself because even if we are reborn, we, this version of us in the here and the now, have just this one life and we deserve to be happy. And happiness, the film states, is meant for everyone, even if it may look a little different from person to person. Even if that acceptance of happiness, support, friendship, or love may feel scary, life is fuller when we let others in.

Monster is an incredibly tender and endearing film that overcomes its obtuse mirroring of events in the second act with an absolutely incredible and breathtaking finale.  Kore-eda has teased out impeccable performances from his entire cast, but the natural tenderness that Kurokawa and Hiiragi display is undeniable. Across its runtime, it features a poignant piano score from Ryuichi Sakamoto, the final score before his death and to whom the film is dedicated, and it shows an absolute understanding of themes. Simple in its construction, the notes ring out, but then waver, as if a word getting caught in our throat and in that split second of hesitation, it allows these big emotions to well up and consume us. This music is in tandem with the nuance and the subtleties that are revealed – such as Yori’s messy penmanship is not sloppiness, but rather the deliberate mirroring of certain characters to spell out Minato’s name – bring a smile to one’s face. The key to the film’s success, though, lies in Kore-eda’s unending love for his characters.  He puts them through hell, but they each come out of it stronger.  Andô has her son back. Mr. Hori has been forgiven. And as for Minato and Yori, they have each other.