Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster is a delicate yet piercing exploration of how truth fractures when filtered through multiple perspectives. It begins as a seemingly simple story of a mother questioning her son’s behavior at school — and then quietly mutates into a study of misunderstanding, authority, and the deep loneliness embedded in everyday life.
| Movie Details | |
|---|---|
| Country | Japan |
| Year | 2023 |
| Genre | Drama, Mystery |
| Runtime | 126 min |
| Director | Hirokazu Kore-eda |
| Main Actors | Sakura Andō, Eita Nagayama, Sōya Kurokawa, Hinata Hiiragi |
The film unfolds in three acts, each retelling the same chain of events from a different viewpoint: the mother’s, the teacher’s, and finally, the children’s. What seems at first a moral accusation turns into a meditation on perception and empathy — a reminder that truth is not a single, sharp object but something that changes shape depending on who holds it.
Kore-eda, known for his humanist cinema (Shoplifters, Nobody Knows), crafts Monster with his characteristic tenderness and restraint. Yet here, he also introduces a sense of mystery — a Rashomon-like ambiguity where every revelation deepens the fog rather than dispelling it. The tension never explodes; it simmers in whispers, silences, and hesitant glances.
Sakura Andō gives a quietly devastating performance as a mother oscillating between fear, guilt, and defiance. Opposite her, Eita Nagayama’s restrained portrayal of the accused teacher captures how adult dignity can crumble under collective suspicion. But it’s the children — played by Sōya Kurokawa and Hinata Hiiragi — who deliver the film’s emotional core. Their secret friendship, shaped by misunderstanding and isolation, becomes a fragile act of resistance against a world too eager to judge.
The screenplay by Yuji Sakamoto, awarded at Cannes, layers emotional truth over social critique. It exposes the invisible pressures shaping Japanese schools and families — the way conformity, shame, and the hunger for moral order often blur compassion. Ryuichi Sakamoto’s final score, composed before his passing, drapes the film in melancholy; his piano echoes feel like sighs of empathy, fading into the air.
Monster is not a puzzle to solve but a feeling to inhabit. It asks viewers to sit with uncertainty — to look again, to listen closer, and to recognize how easily goodness and cruelty can be mistaken for each other. In its final moments, the film sheds all moral pretense, returning to the children’s world of imagination and escape — fleeting, luminous, and utterly human.
Kore-eda reminds us that monsters are not born but made — shaped by fear, silence, and misunderstanding. And sometimes, what we call a monster is just a child asking to be seen.
