‘Monster’ Review: Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Latest Is Powerful ‘Rashomon’-Style Human Drama – Cannes Film Festival
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Japan’s most prolific and successful contemporary filmmaker, Hirokazu Kore-Eda, is back in a favorite place, Cannes, for the unveiling of his latest effort, a return to his Japanese storytelling roots and a good one at that. For his seventh film in the main Cannes competition and his ninth overall (counting two that appeared in Un Certain Regard), Monster represents the first movie since his 1995 debut feature Maborosi that the director has not had a screenplay credit on — this film being written by Sakamoto Yuji — but clearly with its humanist family-centered themes is right in this master craftsman’s wheelhouse.
After last year’s lighter Cannes entry Broker, which was his first Korean film, Monster is more in line with his touching 2013 Jury Prize winner Like Father, Like Son and his 2018 Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, which also earned him a foreign-language Oscar nomination. In fact, he is teaming here again with a star of the latter, the wonderful Ando Sakura who plays Saori, a take-no-prisoners widowed mother now bringing up her son Minato (Kurokawa Soya) who as the film’s first act demonstrates is going through some tough times in his elementary school.
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Minato seems to be in a deep funk, behaving quite oddly, not wanting to get out of bed, jumping from a moving car, and other strange behaviors that are puzzling to Saori until he says he was hit by his teacher who said he had a “pig’s brain” and insulted him in other ways. Saori storms into the principal’s office demanding an explanation but instead gets a profound apology from that teacher, Hori (Nagayama Eita), as well as other officials including the distant principal Fushimi (Tanaka Yuko), but believes there is much more to this than just that. She gets in their face demanding answers about what has happened to her son in this school, but Fushimi, having recently returned from experiencing a family tragedy, and Hori are not forthcoming.
As the story proceeds, Kore-Eda employs a Rashomon-style to flesh out details with sequences devoted not just to Saori’s version of events but also from the POV of Hori, as well as both Minato and his good friend Yori (Hiiragi Hinata), in a film that wraps itself in secrets and lies, the truth landing in gray areas depending on who has the focus at any given moment. Family, as it often does in Kore-Eda’s films, plays a big part here as well as the lasting effects of grief and the divisions and walls we build for ourselves. From Saori to Minato to Yori to Fushimi to Hori, all these characters are developed with even more dimension than usual in Kore-Eda’s films, which are often designed more as informal snapshots. Here instead he and his screenwriter are keenly interested in uncovering layers of truth, a more plot-driven approach leading us down separate paths but no less human than the filmmaker’s best work set in his home country.
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With superb casting Kore-Eda gets excellent work again from Sakura, as well as Eita, the latter as a teacher thrust into a personal crisis that has him teetering on the edge all due to a child’s lie. Veteran actress Tanaka Yuko also delivers with subtle work as the principal whose own secret and suffering slowly comes to a boil. Both the primary child actors here are superb, their relationship in some ways similar to last year’s Cannes Grand Prix winner Closer in terms of complex examination of vulnerable kids experiencing their own levels of trauma in their young lives.
Monster also benefits from a first association for Kore-Eda with the late great Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, bringing a moving final musical score that turns out to be pitch perfect here.
Title: Monster
Festival: Cannes (In Competition)
Director: Hirokazu Kore-Eda
Screenplay: Sakamoto Yuji
Cast: Ando Sakura, Nagayama Eita, Kurokawa Soya, Hiiragi Hinata, Tanaka Yuko
Running time: 2 hr 6 min
Sales agent: Goodfellas
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