If childhood is innocence, Monster proves a good counterargument.

It’s hard to classify this film. It’s like a Russian doll of sorts–you start out thinking it’s one thing, only for another layer to reveal it’s something else, and then something else is revealed that completely unravels the other two narratives. It starts out when adolescent Minato starts displaying disturbing behavior at his school, which his mother Saori attributes to a teacher abusing him. But what she doesn’t know goes way deeper.

This was another recommendation by my friend Isabel, and she was right on the money with this one. When you’re first introduced to Saori and Minato, they are a dual unit trying to keep it together after the death of Minato’s father. When Saori discovers her son has cut his hair and is coming home with injuries, she suspects that a younger teacher named Mr. Hori is responsible, only to be met with orchestrated indifference by the school administrators. She is hitting a brick wall, and she can feel herself slowly losing her son.

Then we shift perspectives. And we learn something new.

Monster seems to be the Japanese sibling of Romería, in that each character is both right and wrong for all the right reasons. There’s no definitive objective truth to what the characters are accusing each other of because they haven’t been given the full context. And once they do find that context, where do they go from there? The only difference is that Monster is focused specifically on what happens to the kids at the center of the mystery, except the only question is whether they are the ones in the driver’s seat.

I’m always a fan of when writers and directors treat kids like human beings with complex emotions and self-sabotaging ways, because I think we’re all like that when we were kids. Once we start to become aware of how the world works, we start to shift gears when we head into middle school and notice how social systems work. That is where we start to lose our innocence. Playing with other kids doesn’t feel like a party everyone is invited to. It just feels like a hierarchy we all just have to accept, and if you’re at the bottom of the social totem pole, that’s basically it.

When you don’t know how to operate in a system that seems to be hostile to your existence, you start to act against yourself. You dumb down your best qualities. You feel like you owe people a certain behavior. To protect yourself, you act against the interests of the people who support you, because by some misguided logic, by separating yourself from them, you are protecting them. But especially in the fifth grade, that is equivalent to cutting out your life support.

The shifting perspectives in this film recognize this to great effect. Once Minato starts acting out, his mother and his teacher don’t know how to respond. The school is imploring them to keep things from escalating, even though they know the pieces aren’t adding up. Saori and Mr. Hori are supposed to be the adults in the room, yet they can’t even control their own kids. What’s worse is that their kids are lying to them too.

But still this film offers hope. Although the film is called Monster, Minato is far from one. His friend/crush Yori is also not one, even though everyone else calls him so. Much like Caliban in The Tempest, people call them “monsters” simply because they upset the natural order of things. But if they don’t fit in the established social order, who’s to say they can’t build their own? Amidst the dueling narratives, you find yourself secretly rooting for everything to turn out alright with Minato and Yori. There’s a peaceful feeling you can’t quite grasp when you watch this film. Even though the world seems to be falling apart, the kids will be alright.

FURTHER THOUGHTS

• I think we lost ourselves as a society when we stopped building treehouses. That shit rules.
• There’s so many hidden details in this film that make the rewatch so much better.
• I feel like Monster could have taken place in America, although it probably would have been a lot more absurd.