A mother investigates her son's bullying at school. You end up with 3 completely different versions of the same events, told from the perspective of the mother, the teacher and the 2 boys themselves. Kore-eda's film is a Japanese Rashomon for the age of institutional accountability.
Monster is a 2023 drama film directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (4 narrative), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Moonlight uses several of the same techniques.
Giving the film several endings. They can come one after another to close different emotional threads, or they can conflict and leave you to weigh competing versions.
How this film uses it
The film is a triptych, a story in 3 panels, and it presents the same events 3 times from different viewpoints. Each one seems complete until the next arrives and breaks its certainty. The truth only appears in the gap between all 3.
Where to see it
The third act's revelation of what the boys were really doing in the abandoned train car. That image changes how you see every earlier accusation and defense.
Telling the story out of order by jumping between time periods. The order you see events in changes how you understand them.
How this film uses it
Kore-eda returns to the same chronological events from 3 different entry points. That is, scenes that looked complete in the first act become strange and new once you experience them with what a different character knows.
Where to see it
The scene of the teacher appearing to attack Minato. You see it first as a mother's horror, then as a school's incompetence, then as something neither reading contained.
Watching events from a measured distance with no swelling music, tear-jerking close-ups or showy camera moves. The film trusts what happens to carry the weight on its own.
How this film uses it
Kore-eda films the children's relationship with his usual restraint. The boys' friendship shows in small gestures and shared spaces, and it is never explained. The camera is content to watch a tenderness that neither boy has words for.
Where to see it
Yori and Minato playing in the abandoned train car. The film watches them in a space that is entirely theirs. For a while, the outside world doesn't matter.
Keeping the camera away from a key event and giving conflicting accounts of it equal weight. You can't work out what really happened, and that uncertainty is the experience of the film.
How this film uses it
The film holds back the central truth of the boys' relationship, which explains every accusation and every defensive lie. It waits until that truth can land with the full weight of everything you have misunderstood.
Where to see it
The final image of the boys running through the tall grass. Once you know what was being protected, the image is heartbreaking and joyful at the same time.
Questions
Monster: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does Monster use?
CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in Monster (2023): Multiple Resolution Structure, Non-Linear Narrative, Observational Restraint and Audience Truth Withholding.
Who directed Monster?
Hirokazu Kore-eda directed Monster, released in 2023. CineCode also covers Shoplifters (2018).
What films are similar to Monster?
Films that share techniques with Monster include Moonlight (2016), The Worst Person in the World (2021), Anatomy of a Fall (2023), Incendies (2010).
