Thoughts from the committee
Since the 90s, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda has carved a path in quietly contemplative films, observing the everyday rituals of his characters as a canvas to their developing relationships with each other and the world around them, and culminating in After The Storm and the celebrated Shoplifters (which won the Palme d’Or in 2018). After detours to France (shooting La Grande Dame Catherine Deneuve in The Truth) and Korea (casting Song Kang-ho in Broker), he returns to Japan – and his best form – with the inaptly-titled Monster.
Set in and around a school on the outskirts of a Japanese town and following an apparent conflict and bullying between two teenage boys, Monster employs the Rashomon trick of telling the same story from three perspectives – the mother of one of the boys, the teacher, then the boy himself – each revealing the sequence of events in a different light. Kore-eda cleverly works on a formal level as well as a narrative one: every time we return to a common sequence in the three stories, he places the camera in a different position, which only adds to the sense of revelation in each successive retelling.
“Lovingly detailed and accented by an aching score from Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died in March [2023], Monster is one of the finest films of the year, and its structure — like its circle of characters — carries secrets that can only be unraveled through patience and empathy.” – Natalia Winkelman, The New York Times