Warning: This review contains spoilers.
It is so rare to see queer struggle reel in children’s point of view that it doesn't come as a surprise how director Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Monster" snagged the hearts of film enthusiasts and dabblers alike, evoking a sense of familiarity from the characters’ experiences like an embrace for the all too often alienation that comes part and parcel in navigating queer identity.
Divided into three acts, Kore-eda employs multiple perspectives using the “Rashmomon” effect to delve into the multitude of questions and pivot toward the truth: Who is the monster?
The film is a web of conflict that opens when fifth-grader Minato (Soya Kurokawa) complains to his widow mother Saori (Sakura Ando) that his homeroom teacher Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama) has been insulting and borderline abusing him in class. This spurs Saori’s incessant school visits where she’s faced with the principal and teachers’ scripted replies, much to her chagrin.
Mr. Hori, who’s wedged between telling his version of events where Minato is bullying his classmate Yori (Hinata Hiiragi) and being forced by his higher-ups to lie for the school image’s sake, chooses to be sacked from his job and bear the brunt of transforming into a social pariah.
From the get-go, it’s difficult to comprehend where the film begins and ends until the third act where Minato’s perspective opens a way amid the winding path of sheer confusion and doubt.
Seeing Minato’s point of view, however, clears the mystery behind his apparent “troubled” behavior both at home and during class: he lost his other shoe by lending it to Yori who was in the throes of bullying from their classmates, the tunnel his mother found him in was the way toward his and Yori’s makeshift playground, and the murky water from his tumbler was a result of extinguishing a pyre they built in a bid for the dead cat to be reborn.
But the reason behind Minato cutting his hair proved to be the heart of the film: Minato thinks he’s a monster. There is a vulnerability in his eyes when he snips his hair after Yori tousled it at school, but more evident is the fear that comes from acknowledging his feelings.
The same dread creeps up when he hurls himself out of her mother’s moving car because she opens up about waiting for him to get married and having an ordinary family. Or the “act like a man” nudge from Mr. Hori at school. It’s not difficult to imagine what might be going on in Minato’s mind during these moments. But perhaps his aversion to such ideas leads to recurring thoughts that something is inherently wrong with him.
The pivotal scene from the movie happens when Minato admits that he likes someone, but he cannot tell because they will know he can never be happy. This prompts him to construct a string of lies that eventually reveals the fact that he’s quashing his feelings for Yori, believing that indulging himself in it makes him a monster.
My professor once said that children are like sponges since they absorb everything around their immediate environment—every gesture and nuance that affects how they perceive others and themselves. As with Minato who’s been hellbent on thinking that he’s a monster, so too is Yori who takes it hook, line, and sinker.
In a short scene, it’s easy to grasp that Yori’s drunkard and abusive father who has been insisting that his son is a monster and his brain has been exchanged with that of a pig leads to Yori’s normalization of this narrative that prompts him to initially lie about being cured now that he likes a girl. His disinclination toward telling Mr. Hori that he’s getting bullied at school because he would just tell him to “act like a man” also sets a chilling tone that mirrors the painful reality often faced by children struggling with their identity.
Photo courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment
The pressure to comply with heteronormativity shifts these children's mindset and turns it into a heavy burden of constantly pulling from the gentle push of fondness toward the same sex.
The glaring heteronormative standards imposed on children—be it intended or said in mere passing— leave little to no space for queerness to emerge more so embraced. Minato and Yori have instead sought safety in the confines of their makeshift playground by the abandoned train wagon, immersed in their little bubble of fantasy, because it offers a haven away from the deafening society filled with prejudice and discrimination.
The overarching question of “Who’s the monster?” eventually blurs as the three divided parts unfold. Is it the children who think they are? The widowed mother who frightened the school administration out of their wits? Or Mr. Hori who tried to help but couldn’t grasp the children’s situation?
"Monster’s" ambiguity offers a myriad of interpretations for viewers to parse. But perhaps the film’s monster is the harrowing tale of two kids who feel the need to hide who they are in fear that their heart veers away from the sense of normalcy perpetuated by heteronormativity, nudging the audience for a more accepting society.
