Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 127 minutes
Release Date: June 2nd, 2023 (Japan) / November 22nd, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Gaga / Toho / Well Go USA Entertainment
Director(s): Hirokazu Kore-eda
Writer(s): Yûji Sakamoto

Happiness is something anyone can have.

“Who’s the monster?” is a phrase spoken often throughout Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Monster. A mother hears it spoken as a forlorn mantra of defeat. A child hears it as a battlecry for play. We hear it and don’t know quite what to think. And that’s the point. Screenwriter Yûji Sakamoto intentionally tells this story of a young boy named Minato (Soya Kurokawa) three times with vary degrees of detail augmented by each chapter’s specific vantage point. He sets our expectations with the desire to upend them. But will it be for better or worse?

Round one is through the eyes of Saori (Sakura Ando). She’s a single mom who passes by her son Minato whenever work and school allow. So, he is usually home first. Which means she is seeing things without context after the fact: hair in the sink, one shoe instead of a pair, etc. Add a growing malaise and a bandage on his ear and Saori can’t help but assume something terrible is going on. And when Minato corroborates those fears after finding him alone in the dark at an abandoned train yard, she makes a beeline for the school.

Round two centers Minato’s teacher Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama). It’s easy to dislike him at first due to the accusations as well as rumors labeling him “immoral” for frequenting a hostess bar. He’s flippant and disingenuous when confronted by Saori and so we have no pity for him when his life starts falling apart … until, of course, we see that the facts aren’t quite what they seem. Hori is caught between not wanting to ruin a child’s future, not wanting to give the school a bad name, and maintaining his reputation. It’s a no-win situation.

Which leaves round three to Minato himself. It’s here that we discover the “monster” is nothing more than a manifestation of shame rather than malicious intent. Kore-eda and Sakamoto supply the clarity we need to understand the full picture and realize the pain and suffering so many on-screen have been experiencing due to a culture that demands certain truths and actions beyond the scope of an equation dictated by simple “right or wrong.” Accidents are made into death sentences. Love is made impure. Protection becomes a liability.

The human aspects are what shine due to wonderful child performances by Kurokawa and Hinata Hiiragi as his friend Yori and poignant turns by Ando, Nagayama, and Yûko Tanaka as the school’s principal. Each is operating from a level of compassion, but also from motives they aren’t always willing to divulge. It’s why the truth of Minato’s sorrow is so heart-breaking. This is a child listening to what the adults around him say without the necessary context that they are often saying them without thinking about the consequences society has worked so tirelessly to pretend don’t exist.

Even so, I really like the bureaucratic aspects too. So much of what occurs does because of the institution that’s simultaneously protecting and failing young Minato—often through the exact same actions. We’re talking about subject matter that too many are afraid to be vulnerable about and the resulting silence creating a snowball effect without end. One lie begets another. Manipulations abound and reductively restrictive rules cause the truth to be worse for the victim than deceit. That it surrounds two children struggling against the weight of the world despite just wanting to laugh makes it all the more tragic.

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Hinata Hiiragi and Soya Kurokawa in MONSTER; courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment.