A film by Hirokazu Kore-eda that turns the "Monster" world upside down *Note! Contains spoilers.

The power to turn the world upside down

Is it a Monster?

What did Hirokazu Kore-eda gain by teaming up with Yuji Sakamoto? It is the power to turn the world upside down.

In an interview, Yuji Sakamoto talked about an experience he had while driving a car. Even though the light turned green at a crosswalk, the truck in front of me did not move. Even when I honked the horn, it didn't move in the slightest. When the truck finally started moving, there was a pedestrian in a wheelchair at the crosswalk. The truck was so large that he couldn't see the pedestrian. Yuji Sakamoto said he deeply regretted this.

"I've always wanted to tell a story about the things we don't see in our lives, and what we can do to understand them."

What can we do to understand what we cannot see? A single point of view is limited to the field of view that the character can see. Multiple perspectives are necessary to depict the unrecognized "blind spots." It's like Akira Kurosawa's `` Rashomon '' (50). This work also tells the story of a samurai murder based on the testimonies of four men and women. The answer that Yuji Sakamoto came up with was the so-called Rashomon style.

``The Monster'' has a three-act structure. The first act is from the perspective of Saori (Sakura Ando), who lost her husband at an early age and struggles to raise her children as a single mother. The second act is from the perspective of a newly appointed elementary school teacher, Hari (Eita Nagayama). The third act is from the perspective of Saori's only son, Minato (Kurokawa Soya). A building fire becomes the ``starting point'' of each story, and hidden ``facts'' are revealed like peeling away tissue paper.

“Monster” ©2023 “Monster” Production Committee

In the first act, Saori reacts to the teachers who repeatedly give her knee-jerk responses, saying things like, ``You don't have a human heart,'' and ``Are I talking about humans?'' Indeed, from her point of view, the principal Fushimi (Yuko Tanaka) speaks like an uncoordinated android, and Mori is a psychotic violent teacher.

However, in the second act, when the story is repeated from Mori's perspective, it becomes clear that he is a serious teacher who cares for the children. Rather, Saori is a monster parent who infiltrates the school and takes advantage of her, and the children who lie about being assaulted by Hori are unidentified "Monster."

It feels like a negative is being reversed to a positive, and black is being reversed to white. This is Yuji Sakamoto. The TV drama `` Our Textbook '' (2007), for which he wrote the scenario, was another such work. This work is a mystery that investigates the mystery of a female student's fall accident, but with each episode, the characters change from white to black, and then from black to white. An attempt was made to supplement the characters with multiple meanings, rather than one with a single meaning.

What is noteworthy about ``Monster'' is that it applies its inverted structure not only to the characters, but also to the world itself. The third act is told from Minato's perspective. The world that a 5th grade elementary school boy sees is infinitely intolerant and cruel.

We vividly witness how the "normal world" we are used to seeing transforms into a "violent world" that bares its fangs at the boys. That is the ``power to turn the world around'' that Hirokazu Kore-eda acquired by teaming up with Yuji Sakamoto.