Where the Wild Japanese Kids Are...
怪物
Kaibutsu
dir: Hirokazu Kore-Eda
2023
This is a film you watch for twenty minutes and have various opinions about the characters, and their various doings and transpirings.
Then you watch it for another half hour, and have a completely different set of opinions about the same characters, having observed the same doings and transpirings, but from other people’s angles or perspectives.
And then there’s a third or fourth run through of the same events, the same people, again with another vantage point, and then you’re left breathless at what the director has pulled off.
This is like watching Simone Biles perform another never-done-before gymnastics move and make it look effortless. Hirokazu Kore-Eda is the Simone Biles of Japanese filmmaking with regards to getting amazing performance from kid actors, which is notoriously hard.
It is so notoriously hard notorious drunk W.C. Fields once said you should never work with children or animals, and he was probably right, but then again, he was a hopeless drunk.
But this director… he gets such gentle, unprecocious and heart-rending performances from kids. If you ever watched Nobody Knows, way back in the day, about a bunch of kids trying to survive without any adult giving a damn about them, and how that works out, well you won’t be surprised by how things play out here.
I have to say, I watched the first part of this film with a growing sense of unease, because it really seems like it’s going in a particular direction. A lot happens in this flick, and very little at the same time, and those moments get blown out of all proportion, but it’s only through repetition that we grasp just how massive (or actually minor) those moments truly were.
People get things wrong. People make assumptions. People with imperfect knowledge of what other people have done and why they might have done it, pronounce judgement upon each other, and rarely get the big picture view that is the path to understanding. Only we get to understand most things by film’s end, and instead of it being a torment (like when you read someone’s diary, and find out you’re not mentioned at all), it’s a relief, a sweet relief.
And, ultimately, this film isn’t asking us to decide who the actual monster or monsters are in this flick: it’s telling us that we might have made a mistake from the get go.
There are no monsters, there’s just us, and the mistakes we make along the way.
There’s a young boy, Minato (Sōya Kurokawa). It’s just him and his mum, Saori (Sakura Andō), since his dad’s death. Right from the start, there are signs. Signs of what we assume are bad things happening somewhere. Mysterious abrasions and bruises. He disappears at times. There are fires lit. Random hair cutting. Shoes going missing. Throwing himself out of moving cars. Erratic acting out. Cryptic statements. The repeated refrain of “who is the monster now?”
Single mums, only in this flick, cop it hard. It’s almost like society thinks single mums are an easy target worthy of hitting over and over again. Saori is just trying to look out for her son, and suspects something is going awry at school, and much of what Minato says doesn’t make a lot of sense.
It seems like there’s been some issue with a teacher, Mr Hori (Eita Nagayama), who maybe put his hands on the kid, with or without good reason. The more Saori presses the school, the more apologetic they all are, but their apologies get more and more mechanical and formal, even as things seem to be escalating.
One further point is that the principal of the primary school, Makiko Fushimi (Yūko Tanaka) has only just returned to work after the accidental death of her grandchild. She operates dutifully from within a fog of constant grief.
There is an early scene that occurs in this film, and while I don’t doubt that it makes perfect sense culturally for this time and place, it’s a scene like nothing you’d see in a flick from any other country you can think of. The principal, other administrators, and the teacher in question bow to Saori in apology, in the deepest bow humanly, for such an extended period of time. Saori doesn’t want apologies, nor the bowing. Deep bows don’t pay the bills, they don’t improve your kid’s education and they don’t protect your kid if someone’s abusing them.
It really does seem like something terrible is happening. And yet, is that what is actually happening? Other people indicate that it’s actually Minato who might be bullying a different child in his class, being Yori Hoshikawa (Hinata Hiiragi). Or maybe Yori is bullying Minato?
Who knows? Well, I know, because I’ve watched the whole film, but for the longest time based on what piecemeal tidbits we are given, maybe what we think has happened isn’t what’s actually happened.
Each time the narrative is restarted, we get additional details cluing us into what really happened at a given point, who really did something, and what they said about it. One constant, even as we get more details, is that people’s assumptions are wrong. And that people saying the wrongest, most hurtful things to each other don’t know the truth, most of the time, but it doesn’t stop them from lashing out. Rumours have a tremendous power in this story, and the facts rarely change narratives once the rumours get entrenched.
We watch the story from teacher Hori’s perspective again, and see that the flippant, arrogant arsehole we might have seen him as initially not only has additional depths, but additional pressures upon him. Some occasions were happenstance or accidents, or misinterpreted; some situations where the school administration lie are actually to protect Minato, and not the teacher they seem to be running interference for.
It’s yet another film showing what a thankless task it is, and how fraught with peril, to be a teacher these days, no matter what country you’re in. I salute all of you teachers still putting up with so much nonsense, and for being demonised on top of it all.
Every single thing teacher Hori tries to do to diffuse the situation gets progressively, almost comically worse, making him look worse, and seemingly pushing Minato closer to the edge of hurting someone else or himself. The teacher, also, gets closer and closer to the edge of sanity.
The little details stand out. This isn’t a detective mystery, don’t get me wrong, but it’s the little details of people’s behavior that really stick out and make you shake your head not with disagreement, but with the shamelessness of some people.
There’s little things like the increasingly irate Saori being in a supermarket, and seeing the principal trip over a kid, for whatever reason possessed her, and knowing she was seen doing it. There’s the way a particular photo is accidentally knocked over, and later on you find out why in was in that position in the first place. A missing shoe turning up where you wouldn’t expect it. A school that seems like it’s demonising a student to protect a teacher is shown, potentially, to be protecting the student (from himself and his actions) and demonising the teacher.
A landslide that seems like it might have destroyed a found / constructed paradise, during a storm that seems like it’s going to ruin many, many lives.
And then there’s the last part of the film, giving us more about the friendship between Minato and Yori, two lost little boys, with their own problems, as well as their delight in their created wonderland, and their confusion about their feelings resulting in more harm than they could ever wish.
The film is sensitive and touching throughout, but that last section…my gods, that last section would melt the heart of the coldest cynic who isn’t dead yet. At least, of the kind that would hunt down and watch movies from acclaimed Japanese directors of films that have no giant atomic lizards, samurai swords or yakuza with impeccable scores by Ryuichi Sakamoto, rest in peace you creative genius.
This is not a heavily melodramatic or wearying film, regardless of what I may have made it sound like. This director has such a light hand, such a deft touch in his direction. The scale feels so lowkey and intimate so much of the time, and the acting is mostly subdued and true to life, even when it’s dealing with the big questions like grief and guilt.
It’s a lovely film, but hey, don’t take my word for it. Maybe watch it some time, and decide for yourself.
9 times it remains eternally true that we always hurt the ones we love out of 10
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“If only some people can have it, then it’s not happiness. That’s just nonsense. Happiness is something anyone can have.” – tell that to all the other little monsters - Monster
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