Review of MONSTER (Kaibutsu) : Verification Via Various Versions

October 12, 2023

Since the death of her husband, Mugino Saori (Sakura Andō) had been raising her son Minato (Sōya Kurokawa) on her own as a single mother. Lately, she had been noticing that her son had been behaving strangely when he came home from school. At first it was just asking odd question. Then, he cut off the curls of his hair. Worst of all, he was found in a dark roadside tunnel, with a wounded ear, then he even jumped out of his mom's running car. 

Upon further questioning, Minato finally confessed that he was being bullied by his homeroom teacher Michitoshi Hori (Eita Nagayama). Saori went to school to report to the extremely polite school principal, Makiko Fushimi (Yūko Tanaka). The administration and Mr. Hori expressed their profuse apologies repeatedly. However, Saori was not satisfied at all, very frustrated that the erring teacher had not been given a more severe punishment. 

This is the latest film from director Hirokazu Kore-eda, a Japanese filmmaker whose every new work is highly anticipated by his fans the world over. This particular film "Monster" won the Best Screenplay prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for writer Yuji Sakamoto. This was also one of the rare films that Kore-eda did NOT write himself, the only previous one being the acclaimed "Maborosi" (1995) written by Yoshihisa Ogita.

In the first act told was the mother's version of things, we felt much anger for Mr. Hori. In the second act, the events were retold from Mr. Hori's view, as well as the principal's view, shaking our initial opinions. In the third act, Minato tells his own complete story himself, which finally got to fill in all the blanks left out earlier. This was very much an adaptation of the storytelling style famously employed in Akira Kurosawa's classic "Rashomon" (1951). 

Weaved within this mystery story was a second story about the friendship that developed between Minato and his classmate Hoshikawa Yori (Hinata Hiiragi). Yori was a gentle kid bullied by his classmates at school and his father (Shidō Nakamura) at home. He found sanctuary in an abandoned train in the forest, and he welcomed Minato in. This conflict is very reminiscent of Belgian film "Close" (2022), but this turned out in its own way. 8/10

PS: One remarkable element of this film was its musical score composed by Academy Award-winning musician (for "The Last Emperor" in 1986), Ryuichi Sakamoto. The emotional score of "Monster" was the master's final musical work for a film before he succumbed to cancer just last March this year.