This is Kore-eda operating at his peak as he delivers one of 2023’s finest films with this intricately-structured and revelatory drama about the blind spots in our understanding of human behaviour and empathy. 

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After the somewhat underwhelming The Truth (2019) and Broker (2022), Monster sees Hirokazu Kore-eda not just returning to form but operating at his absolute peak.  It is, to me, his best film since Like Father, Like Son (2013). 

While many of his films are treatments of complex family relationships, Kore-eda’s style is often straightforward and quietly affecting. 

In Monster, he challenges himself even further, taking Yuji Sakamoto’s Cannes Best Screenplay-winning script (one of the rare instances that Kore-eda doesn’t have writing responsibilities) and turning it into a cinematic quilt of many interlinking visual and aural threads. 

The diegetic use of dissonant if mournful sounds of brass instruments in a couple of critical scenes exemplify not just the Japanese auteur’s mastery of his craft, but his—and his characters’—sensitivities to what I would describe as the subtly changing ‘tenor’ of the film. 

“They say it all burned down.”

Monster is such an intricately-structured and precisely-edited work, a kind of Rashomon-esque narrative that intuitively moves back and forth its timeline in order to define, and then in its extraordinary final act, transcend its various stories. 

A frustrated mother wants an explanation from the school for her son’s increasingly bizarre behaviour, which she thinks is caused by his new teacher.  This sets up a storm in the school, while outside, a real storm is brewing. 

Heavy rain threatens everyone’s safety, but Ryuichi Sakamoto’s suitably-titled ‘Aqua’ (from his 1999 ‘BTTB’ album), used so heartrendingly by Kore-eda, offers a kind of comfort that cannot be described. (This would also be the final feature film credit as a composer for the late musician). 

A revelatory drama with top-tier performances, Monster is about the blind spots in our understanding of human behaviour and empathy.  In life’s countless and endless series of mazes, it reassures us that it’s better to feel lost than lose oneself.   

Grade: A

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