Monster (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2023)

[dadaistnun]

Teaser for Kaibutsu (Monster), starring Sakura Ando, scored by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

[Michael Kerpan]

dadaistnun -- Monster looks more like something by Kiyoshi Kurosawa than by Kore'eda...

[yoloswegmaster]

Teaser for Kaibutsu (Monster), starring Sakura Ando, scored by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

New poster:



Is this the first time Kore-eda has worked with Toho?

[Michael Kerpan]

>> Is this the first time Kore-eda has worked with Toho?

I think so. But it looks like GAGA is the primary distributor (as in several other recent Kore'eda films).

[yoloswegmaster]

New trailer for Monster

I'm just hoping that this is better than Broker, which to me is the weakest film that Kore-eda has made (I haven't seen The Truth).

[Finch]

Well Go USA have bought Kore-eda's Monster for the US. Maybe, unlike Magnolia with Shoplifters, they'll actually bother with a Blu-Ray.

[Michael Kerpan]

Is Magnolia the most problematic about skipping Blu-Ray releases? It is certainly aggravating.

[vsski]

I assume Kaibutsu hasn’t been released in the US yet, hence no discussion of the movie on the forum so far. I managed to finally catch up with it in Tokyo and look forward to the discourse that may ensue here. Without giving away too much for those not having seen the movie, Kore-eda is going back to his more familiar line of family movies with a mother and her son at the center of it and in this case a layered story line that slowly reveals through recounting events from different viewpoints what really transpired. It has some superb acting most notably by Andō Sakura as the mother and the two youngsters. As most here will know the movie wasn’t written by Kore-eda himself and maybe this is why at least for me it felt different from his previous family dramas and less nuanced and subtle, but Sakamoto Yuji won the screenwriting price at Cannes, so what do I know. As a long time fan of almost everything that Kore-eda has done, this certainly for me was a film worth seeing and I will have to revisit it again to see how I fully feel about it, but it didn’t have the emotional impact some of his other films like Maborosi, After the Storm and Still Walking had on me after first viewing. I look forward to the discussion on the forum here.

[Michael Kerpan]

I wonder how long it will be until this shows up in US theaters?

[Never Cursed]

(Forgive me if I’m vague up ahead, but for this film I think it’s better not to discuss the plot in any real specificity).

Monster continues an unfortunate general downward trend in Kore-eda’s most recent films for me. While it doesn’t reach the cloying and frankly insulting lows which Broker achieved, it chases two tonal and experiential extremes at more or less the same time and fails through overstraining to fully capture either one. The first two-thirds, ostensibly about the terror that adults feel at not understanding the internal lives and motivations of the children they raise, is directed with a weird distance from the very immediate emotion that the adult actors bring to their performances. Instead of playing into the psychological effects of that mystery upon the adults in question, the film devotes a lot of time or visual attention to the highlighting of odd prop locations and sounds and details about what a character thinks about might be happening; metaphorically so much emphasis is on the wrong syllable despite the generally excellent acting, score, and technical acumen on display. Sakura Andō’s character in particular is an emotional mystery; despite being a focal character of the film, and despite Andō clearly playing her as if her motivations are apparent and clearly expressed, her anger at the situation with her son is all depicted as responsive rather than reactive when the core of her motivation is her own loss of control. It’s a frankly bizarre type of emotional dissonance from a director who is normally (to a fault!) so compassionate. So much has been established or teed-up for payoffs in these sections that by the time the segment with the childrens’ POV rolls around, Kore-eda only has so much time in which to tell the very free and unstructured story of self-discovery that I suspect he has more interest in anyway. Too many direct accusations of bad behavior or examples of lashing-out are just never followed up upon or explained from the developing emotional state of the kids for the segments to play off each other. It’s a real shame, too, as this is a really beautifully-shot film (high-res digital doesn’t always look this nice), ducking and weaving with its child actors and presenting their makeshift play-spaces with a sense of location and wonder that I know must have taken a lot of effort. I wish it enabled a superior film to be better still.

I wonder how long it will be until this shows up in US theaters?

Late November in NY/LA, wider in early December. But you'll (I hope!) get to see it this month at IFF Boston!

[Michael Kerpan]

Usually the IFF does not have much (if anything) I feel I need to see. This year will be an exception, I guess.

[therewillbeblus]

Usually the IFF does not have much (if anything) I feel I need to see. This year will be an exception, I guess.

I can't think of a year where IFF Boston's Fall Focus didn't have Kore-eda's newest film - I've been there for at least the last four. It's the most predictable slot. The executive director of the festival has publicly stated that Kore-eda is his favorite filmmaker so I suspect they go out of their way to get his stuff, though they also seem to luckily partner with distributors who've been carrying his work lately.

Anyways, maybe I'll see you there! The full lineup hasn't been announced yet (they'll probably add 3-4 more) but here's the provisional slate

[hearthesilence]

I actually saw Monster knowing nothing about it - I wasn't even aware of it until it was suggested to me and was curious as to why it's had such a muted roll-out. (It apparently had a very limited run in December, probably to qualify for awards, and it's now being rolled out albeit in modest fashion.)

It's definitely received its share of acclaim and negative reviews, but I definitely get the feeling I've processed the film very differently from the negative reviews, which aren't always consistent either. (Odie Henderson in The Boston Globe, which I couldn't read in full, says it swiftly fell apart in the third act whereas Richard Brody thought that section was a mini-masterpiece, implying it should've been broken out from the film.) Ty Burr and Richard Brody also seemed to have a similar complaint about the film, with Brody even going as far as saying one is probably unnerved by the feeling they were being toyed with by the filmmaker. Burr simply complained "you feel the filmmakers’ hands on the tiller throughout," but he also says "as the film moves forward, the audience is made to constantly redefine who the title 'monster' may be as the story is replayed from different points of view. It’s a gambit as old as (and older than) Rashomon..." but I don't think that fully, much less accurately, captures what's really happening here. The use of multiple perspectives is so different from Kurosawa's approach in Rashomon that such a comparison feels extremely superficial and misleading.

I've posted this before, but one of my favorite descriptions about the difference between cinema and literature came from D A Pennebaker: "The one sure thing in life is that you never know what's going on in someone's head - that's what the novel was invented for. You can't point a camera at someone and find out what's in their head. But it does the next best thing: It lets you speculate." And the film seems to explore that concept as far as it will go. It also does so in a way that seems truthful to life - how often do people assume the worst about someone or the worst about a situation based on what they think they're witnessing? I probably see that all the time as long as I can remember. I never took the film as primarily arguing that adults misunderstand kids because that misunderstanding is far more universal than that (and indeed you see it happen between adults).

I'm not comfortable calling Kore-eda's filmmaking here manipulative either. It doesn't come off like he's simply pulling a fast one on us, at least not to me. To use one example, there's a moment where one of the adults seems to do something that's potentially sinister. Later on, we get the context that shows that's not the case at all. It may be too subtle to miss, but the context makes it understandable why this person could've done something awful. (It's otherwise unexplained as to why it happened.) If I take that earlier moment out of context, I don't think the way it's been filmed - the composition, the editing, the performance - suggests what was originally implied on its own. That's primarily the result of the context we had up to that point. With the additional context, the filmmaking doesn't seem misleading to me either, like it's pushing against what's really happening. Time and time again, when something like that happened, it just seemed to underline what's true in life - without the right context, we will speculate the wrong thing. That seemed not only honest but inevitable.

That's partly why Brody's mixed review seemed so disappointing - he didn't seem to get that, and as a result he didn't see how that connects with the last act...

SpoilerShow

Because when someone develops a strong feeling for someone else, and they're unsure if the other person feels the same way, or even feels if it's appropriate, speculation can become a constant and uncontrollable urge when they're overwhelmed by the desire to know what that other person is thinking...

...except this time it plays out with a different effect. Are certain parts of it too sentimental for my taste? Yes (and it doesn't appear I'm alone in that). But I can't hold that against the film given what it accomplishes.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm fully with you on this. It's nowhere near as manipulative and heavy-handed as those critics would have you believe. It plays fair as far as I can recall: all of the elisions that hide crucial information are precisely the limitations each POV character would have. There's nothing pointedly misleading or designed to fake out the viewer. Even when there is something that would seem to point in a thudding direction, like the cat, the movie is careful to suggest that we not take the information too seriously ourselves by presenting it at two removes, ie. it's reported to the teacher by another kid whose vague and accusatory language suggests something less than the truth. And we see nothing of what actually happened or even the aftermath, giving us little with which to form our own false impression. By that point in the movie, where there's already been one perspective shift, an intelligent and perceptive viewer would be skeptical anyway. Speaking of, the movie even hints at its final reveal throughout. Even in the first section, when the mother goes to Hoshikawa's house, and...

SpoilerShow

...he cheerfully says they're friends, but also has her son's missing pair of shoes. If her son were the bully, he ought to have Hoshikawa's shoes, not vice versa. It's that moment that really made me question the whole bully narrative, and convinces me that the movie is playing fair.

And I want to add that the main reason the film didn't feel manipulative is how none of the POV characters turn out to be monsters, just people who sit adjacent to social and cultural monstrousness: monster parents (a Japanese English term), abusive authority figures, and bad seeds are all social concepts the characters have to navigate, mentally placing others within them while refusing to see themselves in the same--that is, reserving nuance for themselves but not others. The true monstrousness in the film happens in the wings: an administration so eagre cover its own ass and indict a women without knowing her that it cannot treat parents as even human; a society that demands sacrifice and suffering over compassion; and the biggest one of all, a fear and distrust of those who are different, leading not just to cruelty and abuse on several levels, but a complicity among those who'd tolerate it or blind themselves to it. This extends to everyone who fails Hoshikawa, and it is everyone who fails him. Minato is not exempt from the failure, although we sympathize with how his own failures are the result of larger social failures that he himself suffers under: the wider bullying that goes unrecognized by self-involved, unperceptive authority figures, and the intolerance of a society that prizes conformity and social cohesion, but earns it off the back of ostracism and brutal in-group/out-group behaviour. Minato clearly chafes under these unjust expectations and a fear of ostracism, but without a proper outlet sometimes misdirects his frustrations back on to Hoshikawa, the only socially acceptable outlet, even tho' it's precisely abuse towards Hoshikawa that he hates. It's nicely observed.

In fact it's Hoshikawa who reveals how the movie's manipulations are not manipulative. He's in plain sight during the narrative; we can see what's happening unobscured and without directorial misdirection; and yet we become so caught up in the guilt spreading, perhaps to the point of participating in it, that we too overlook Hoshikawa, the one genuinely abused character. In fact we might even be tempted to wonder if he's a psychopath, and unfairly at that given the actual behaviour we witness. In fact it's Hoshikawa's best character traits, his optimism, cheerfullness, and fellow feeling that helps us indict him: because, really, no one could actually be so positive, it has to be fake, a personality disorder. But no, he has a kind of inner strength, a sense of himself, and an inborn kindness that no one else in the movie has. Their emotions and actions are fraught, but the one with the most fraught living situation is clear on himself. The movie invites us to judge him but never guides us to. It may work on our mistrust, but it doesn't require it. The narrative works just as well if you see Hoshikawa correctly from jump.

So, no, I don't think the movie witholds key information in a way so misleading it counts as manipulation. Everything withheld is reasonable in context, and there's plenty not witheld that ought to guide us more than we might let it. Kore-eda is not Haneke; he's not trying to indict the audience. The audience isn't a monster as an audience. Mostly we just come to a deeper and more positive understanding of an initially shallow issue. Our feelings and understanding grow the more we see; we aren't chastened by what we learn, at least not by the filmmakers.

Funnily, I'm pretty allergic to sentimentality, but never found this one sentimental.

[Mr Sausage]

I'll make this a separate post:

I've posted this before, but one of my favorite descriptions about the difference between cinema and literature came from D A Pennebaker: "The one sure thing in life is that you never know what's going on in someone's head - that's what the novel was invented for. You can't point a camera at someone and find out what's in their head. But it does the next best thing: It lets you speculate."

I take his point, but this isn't actually true. You just need to look at drama. Plays have resources like monologues and soliloquies to tell you exactly what a character is thinking, and so do films (voice overs, mind screens, dreams and fantasies, etc.). It just depends on whether you want to use them. I don't think there's a real difference here. Actually, I'd say this is one area that shows how much film and theatre share with each other.

[knives]

On The Limey commentary Soderbergh has an engaging discussion on this point where he talks about trying to show thought without voice over.

[hearthesilence]

I take his point, but this isn't actually true. You just need to look at drama. Plays have resources like monologues and soliloquies to tell you exactly what a character is thinking, and so do films (voice overs, mind screens, dreams and fantasies, etc.). It just depends on whether you want to use them. I don't think there's a real difference here. Actually, I'd say this is one area that shows how much film and theatre share with each other.

Excellent points. To be fair to Pennebaker, I should say I reframed his quote as the difference between cinema and literature - I believe he was discussing his own work, and with his films you can see why that would come to him. I want to say it makes perfect sense when you think of cinema in an elemental form (for lack of a better word) where if it's purely visual (silent and wordless), that definitely plays out.

[Mr Sausage]

I take his point, but this isn't actually true. You just need to look at drama. Plays have resources like monologues and soliloquies to tell you exactly what a character is thinking, and so do films (voice overs, mind screens, dreams and fantasies, etc.). It just depends on whether you want to use them. I don't think there's a real difference here. Actually, I'd say this is one area that shows how much film and theatre share with each other.

Excellent points. To be fair to Pennebaker, I should say I reframed his quote as the difference between cinema and literature - I believe he was discussing his own work, and with his films you can see why that would come to him. I want to say it makes perfect sense when you think of cinema in an elemental form (for lack of a better word) where if it's purely visual (silent and wordless), that definitely plays out.

Even cinema in its supposedly elemental form isn't so different in this regard from avant-garde theatre, especially the more wordless stuff, or interpretive dance. Again, I take Pennebaker's point, it's much easier to represent thought in a novel or poem; but I think many critics and filmmakers coming out of the post-Cahier era try too hard to isolate film from its theatrical influences (see: Rosenbaum's confused criticisms of Bergman). I understand why they did it back then: film was dismissed as a subordinate art, and they wanted it taken as seriously as the other high arts. But film's taken seriously now, so we can stop pretending it's some kind of pure or sui generis art, utterly unique to itself. It's a mongrel art, made from painting, photography, and theatre, and that's one of the reasons it's so good. Give me film at its most impure.

(I'm just digressing at this point hearthesilence}

[Michael Kerpan]

Is this scheduled for BD release soon. this seemed to have come and gone from Boston before we were really aware it was (briefly) here. In any event, I think it probably made its brief stopover after my wife had ner knee surgery...

[jazzo]

I think Monster is due for BR release in North America by WellGo on April 4.

[Michael Kerpan]

I think Monster is due for BR release in North America by WellGo on April 4.

Thanks. Usually we have managed to see HK's films screened (no matter how brief the time window). But not this time.

[allyouzombies]

I watched this last night, and wanted to hear others' thoughts on the ending.

SpoilerShow

I was reading some other folks' reactions on Letterboxd, and many seemed to interpret the ending as that the two boys didn't survive and in fact died during the storm. While watching, this never occurred to me - and it would seem a cruel move on Kore-eda's part. But I'm curious to see if anyone else read the film this way.

[Mr Sausage]

I took the ending at face value.

[therewillbeblus]

For Boston-area residents, IFF Boston just announced:

Hirokazu Kore-eda in person!

STILL WALKING: THE CINEMA OF HIROKAZU KORE-EDA
March 15–17 at the Brattle

The Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film turns 30 this year, and they are celebrating by bringing legendary Japanese director (and multiple IFFBoston alum) Hirokazu Kore-eda to Boston for their award ceremony on Sunday, March 17. In honor of this special occasion, the Brattle will be screening several of Kore-eda’s films—some with in-person Q&As.

AFTER LIFE — Fri. March 15 & Sat. March 16
STILL WALKING (IFFBoston 2008) — Sat. March 16
BROKER (Fall Focus 2022) — Sat. March 16
AIR DOLL — Sat. March 16
SHOPLIFTERS (Fall Focus 2018) — Sun. March 17
MONSTER (Fall Focus 2023) — Sun. March 17

See more details here

It doesn't look like any screenings are confirmed to be Q&As at this time, so you may want to wait for more information - but sometimes this info can rollout at the last minute.. I'm sure this is a dream come true for IFF Boston's executive director, who regularly cites Kore-eda as his favorite filmmaker (which is why it's usually safe to assume we're getting his newest film at a Boston fest)