AFF Correspondence 2023: Whose Lie Is It Anyway? Or, The Monster Review

Sending your child out into the world hinges on a sense of trust that can be scary to contemplate. Monster, the latest film from Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, takes those underlying fears and splays them out with tension and heart in equal measure.

Working from a script crafted by Yuji Sakamoto, Kore-eda focuses on the terror and mystery of the inner workings of kids. The central scenario plays out in the lives of single mother Saori (Sakura Ando) and her son, Minato (Soya Kurokawa), who one day begins to exhibit strange and unsettling behavior. As any mother would do in that situation, Saori first tries to ask Minato what’s bothering him, before being led to believe that her son is facing abuse at his school—specifically from young teacher Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama).

Accusations, cold responses from the school board, and ever-changing testimonies begin to shape the film into something like Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, as the audience starts to second-guess the main character’s true motivations in the face of harrowing allegations. In the first two acts, Kore-eda shows a strong hand in setting up mystery and dread from a parent’s point of view, with Ando anchoring an engrossing character who’s trying to figure out what’s happened to her son, and who should pay the price.

After a first act that primarily focuses on Saori’s desperate attempt to figure out the truth behind her son’s upsetting behavior, Kore-eda throws a curveball and resets the story from the beginning, this time from another character’s perspective. The film will then eventually jump from one character’s perspective of the same events to another, showing a sharper relation to the classic Rashomon. However, Kore-eda and Sakamoto aren’t here to show the power of doubt in a story, but the tragedy of one where the audiences eventually find out the truth of what’s been going on. Character motivations become devastatingly human in their reasoning with lies being spouted to protect rather than harm.

Monster’s story is one where good intentions eventually give way to doubt, and eventually malicious accusations lead to impacts on each character’s life. In the end, the events behind the plot are revealed to have been fueled by childish logic, but that cause is devastating in the results that it brings.

These reveals wouldn’t work without believable characters, and thankfully Kore-eda, as he did in Shoplifters, focuses on the people involved in this chaotic situation. Despite a wrenching main mystery, there aren’t many bombastic performances here. Ando could get the most to chew on, but her approach is refreshingly to the ground, making their character’s pursuit of the truth all the more engrossing. Nagayama perfectly fits the vibe of his new-to-town Mr. Hori. This is a character who is set up to be viewed one way in the early scenes of the movie before being transformed into a more relatable tragic character.

The main revelations in both story and performance aspects come through in the film’s youngest stars, the mentioned Kurokawa as Minato and Hinata Hiiragi as Minato’s friend. In a story that eventually reveals its power in the true relationship between these two boys, both performers show they’re up to the task.

Kurokawa brings an effortless realism to Minato, a boy going through the strange and frustrating aspects of growing up. As the story shifts Minato’s character motivations around, Kurokawa is adept at keeping pace, keeping us enraptured by a young performer moving through feelings of alienation, compassion, and connection. Hiiragi is cute as a button in this one, but there’s a disarming sadness found in his character, a friendly boy nonetheless pushed to the fringes of acceptance by people at school and at home. The eventual reveal of these two boys’ connection to one another wouldn’t hit with an emotional whack if not for the impressive performances.

Juggling a movie that starts off a thriller and eventually melds into a warm, coming-of-age fairy tale is a difficult task, but Kore-eda makes these shifts go down easy. It all works because the director, along with writer Yakamoto, empathize with the characters in the story. The most enthralling thing isn’t the truth behind the central mystery, but the truths that we eventually learn about the characters and their relationships.