Review: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film ‘Monster’ is both warmly exuberant and carefully restrained—and a mighty entry into the queer coming-of-age canon.
’s films achieve a rare quality: a sort of a sublime everydayness, in which simple matters of life take on breathtaking, poetic shape. He’s a close and affectionate studier of the vagaries and specificities of little corners of human experience, finding offbeat angles of approach to tell broadly appealing stories. Sometimes he gets dinged for being overly sentimental, or too cutesy, which is always a danger when trafficking in so much warmhearted sincerity.
Kore-eda sets this all up in such a way that we, the perhaps slightly jaded audience, assume we know what’s coming. The film will chronicle Naori’s struggle to reach her son, and his journey toward betterment. Naori’s husband has died at some indefinite point in the past, so it seems that grief will come to bear on this process of understanding and healing.’s script leads us in unexpected directions. Minato claims that a teacher, Mr.
The story morphs again, looping back to show us other characters’ perspectives as the film gradually reveals the truth of the matter. This makessomething of a mystery , though Kore-eda keeps things relatively grounded, realistic. The film is essentially concerned with how a secret, closely held by private fear and societal demand, can affect far more people than just the one keeping it. Read no further if you want to avoid slight spoilers.
Scoring all this are compositions by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, billows of pensive, poignant music that suggest both ebb and flow, growth and retreat. Sakamoto’s melodies combine with Kore-eda’s lush images—summery greens and pale blues, alternately crisp and bleary–to dazzling effect, creating a picture of life in all its hushed beauty, its gnawing ache. One comes to this festival in search of at least one good cry, whichprovides generously and without cynical manipulation.
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