At the end of June last year, under the blazing summer sun, I walked through the MTR stations and streets of Hong Kong, catching glimpses of the poster of "Monster" from time to time. On the poster, the protagonists Minato and Iri's gaze goes straight to each passerby, and their two young and childish faces are crawling with mud, as if alluding to their untouched hearts.
Back at the end of the previous year, there was news that Hirokazu Kore-eda would return to Japan and join hands with "gold medal screenwriter" Yuji Sakamoto ("Bouquet of Love") to launch a new work, which immediately caused a commotion on the Internet.
After winning the Palme d'Or in 2018 with "The Thief Family" and climbing to the peak of his career, Kore-eda Hirokazu followed many big directors and began to shift his focus overseas. Although "The Truth" and "The Broker" launched during this period were shortlisted for the three major European competitions, and there was no lack of awards, they only ended up with the evaluation of "stopping at the mean" among the media and the audience, and even had mixed reputations. Many people predict that Hirokazu Kore-eda has begun to decline, and "Thief Family" is the last proof of his talent.
It's Hirokazu Kore-eda
Judging from this as a sign, the birth of "Monster" seems to be a strategy that is busy with self-correction. After all, "traveling abroad" is a metaphysics, and many directors who have fallen on their heels in this matter have to return to their home fields to regain their sense of calmness in creation. The most recent example is Bong Joon-ho ("Parasite"), a friend of Hirokazu Kore-eda and also known as the "Light of Asia".
In terms of the cast lineup, in addition to Yuji Sakamoto, "Monster" also invited Sakura Ando, who is the second pair, and has the aura of Ryuichi Sakamoto's posthumous work...... All kinds of peripheral signs show the state of "explosive style". After the end of Cannes last year, the film won the queer Palme d'Or and the best screenplay one after another, and the public's expectations have also risen a few points.
Stills from "Monster".
Today, 100,000 people have scored a high score of 8.6 on Douban, topping last year's Japanese shadow.
But sitting in the theater, I didn't get the emotional roar I expected. Instead, there is an instinctive rush of questioning about the manipulation felt during the viewing, or "betrayal." To make a metaphor, "Monster" is like an onion-peeling magic, constantly provoking the urge to solve puzzles, but under its carefully woven structure, it is full of clever designs and cuts, and it is rare to see the most skillful depiction of everyday textures.
Who hatched that "monster"
At first glance, some viewers who are familiar with Hirokazu Kore-eda will inevitably be confused: the "Rashomon" style of multi-perspective narrative, the grafting of social suspense elements, and the impression of the director who is known for his restraint and calmness, do not seem to be compatible.
In fact, as early as the 00s, when filming films such as "Distance" and "Nobody Knows", Hirokazu Kore-eda tried to touch on some slightly acute and sensitive issues while insisting on "authorship". 2017's "The Third Suspect" is like a watershed, in this "anti-genre" crime suspense film, it is Hirokazu Kore-eda who blurs the facts of the case, and he is more concerned about the various social outlooks and human nature reflected by the core events as a prism than to spy on "what the truth is".
Stills from "The Third Suspect".
At the beginning of the new film "Monster", it also started with a fire in a small town, and then quickly shelved this clue and turned to Koeda's daily white depiction: Saori, a single mother played by Sakura Ando, pulls her son Maino Minato by opening a laundry. Recently, there have been some strange signs on the child's body (torn ears, lost shoes, cut hair), and she is worried to no avail, so she can only kill her son's elementary school and ask the school for an explanation.
Stills from "Monster".
The emotional logic and layout of this whole paragraph are closely related to the perspective of "mother", and the audience can take advantage of the situation to substitute for her nervous and anxious guardianship, and perceive a series of "unreasonable" icebergs under the horizontal plane: why did his son suddenly jump out of the car when he talked about getting married and starting a family in the car; what did the school hide under the polite mask and apology "statement"; how did Pauli, the physical education teacher who was accused of corporal punishment, seem to have a shameless and remorseful attitude?
At this point, the film has been traveling for more than half an hour, and many smoke screens have dispersed. It wasn't until the last two plots were released with Poly and the protagonists (Minato and Iri) as the main body that the audience was able to restore the whole story. On the other hand, this rigorous three-stage interpretation also unveils the core textual technique of the film, "narrative trickery", that is, by dismembering the truth, breaking the puzzle pieces and reassembling them, inducing the audience to experience the complexity and ambiguity of the world.
The biggest mystery of the film is not about the specific fires, school violence, same-sex friendships and other bright lines, but the doubts that the title holds: who is the "monster"? and who brought it into the world? The answer is hidden in the intricate labyrinth.
Compared with the traditional self-employment, the three paragraphs in the film are all buried with some foreshadowing, which is used to overturn or make up for the previous article: Teacher Poly, who is accused of child abuse, is actually a sunny and kind-hearted person who accidentally touched his nose while pulling a fight, and only came forward to pretend to be a bad guy in order to help the school take the blame and settle the incident; Minato, who was witnessed and scuffled by Iri, has a good impression of the former, but is afraid of being coaxed by his peers and awakens the "evil" Even the superficially kind principal has its dark moments: tripping a child in a supermarket, accidentally crushing his granddaughter while reversing, but in order to protect the reputation of the school and his own career status, his wife is imprisoned.
Rather than these naked portrayals of human nature, which are intended to give the characters a clear character and position, it is better to say that the turbulence of the reef reflects the lethality of rumors and backstabs in modern society, and how people are imprisoned by subjective experience, just like the symbolic fire at the beginning of the film, which burns out the possibility of mutual honesty and understanding.
In other words, the so-called "monster" can be anyone, but any individual who lives under the repressive social system and customs can be swallowed up by irrational emotions and become alienated.
This inference is of course "correct", and the creator renders a strong sense of warning through a number of details. But the strange thing is that the film does not focus on this and digs deeper, but moves out of the lyrical epilogue in the third paragraph, and then slams on the gas pedal and drives into an empty social metaphor that cannot stand up to the beating.
One dose of placebo in a vacuum
"The only real paradise is the paradise we have lost, and the only attractive world is the world we have not yet set foot into. ”
At the end of the film, in the soothing melody of Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Aqua", when Minato and Iri miraculously "come back to life" from the crushed small train car, running and shouting in the sun, my mind flashed Proust's words, and I was quickly reminded of the "price" of this small world of freedom on the screen.
Fragment of "Monster".
Like the progressive point of view, in the setting of the scene, the film chooses three main cuts: home, school, and small town to depict the ecosystem (petri dish) where the "monster" is located. In contrast to the "surface world" full of hidden disciplines, Minato and Iri's secret base, an abandoned carriage in the forest. It is also in this boundary, where there is almost no external threat and gaze, that we can intuitively see the budding feelings between the two protagonists.
Before going any further, it is worth mentioning another film that has been benchmarked by many, namely "Intimacy", which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes the year before. The two share the same emotional bond, and have also made a conscious attempt to attack toxic masculinity derived from it.
The coincidence of unintentional insertion of willows can be regarded as the vane of the dispute between gender and temperament in recent years. One of the major characteristics of both lies in the radiation of the topic itself: based on the untimely death of the flower of male friendship, it tells about the expulsion and harm of social prejudices to the alien. After all, the little male protagonists in the two films are still in the stage of ignorance and youthful exploration, and the psychological pull is even worse than that of ordinary people.
Fragment of "Monster".
However, the biggest difference in tonality is that "Intimacy" has the autobiographical attributes of director De Hoult himself, following the model of psychological drama, using a lot of close-ups and follow-ups to reflect the struggles of the protagonist. If it is likened to a feature, "Monster" is more like a bizarre argumentative essay, with each supporting character appearing in the moral maelstrom.
For example, Minato's mother, Saori, after her husband and cheating lover died together, she hid the cause of her father's death from her son, and placed her posthumous photo in a prominent position in the family, hoping that Minato would grow up following his father's example, and telling him that boys know too many flower names and will not please girls. The deceased father hovered over the family like a ghost, and it also made Saori miss the opportunity to see the child's inner torment.
Stills from "Monster".
Like Minato, Irie also has a crippled family of origin. The father lived all day long in the anguish of his wife's departure and unsatisfactory work, so he transferred his hatred to his weak son, angrily denounced him as a "pig brain", and decided to let Yili transfer to another school without authorization, trying to correct it.
Paulie, a physical education teacher, joked when he witnessed Minato's fall in class, "Do you still say you're a man?" and his way of defusing the conflict with students is to encourage them to "shake hands like two men." After the mystery is revealed, the audience can realize that whether it is parents, teachers, public officials led by the principal, or the classmates who ostracize Iri in groups, they have all played a silent link in the chain of harm at some point, and there is no essential difference in the degree of "evil".
This collective indiscretion and disregard echoes Kore-eda's remarks in an interview with Cannes: "Some form of expression of love is actually a form of violence for the other party, which is cruel and not exclusive to East Asian families." ”
In this regard, the film does not stick to the traditional Japanese-style BL complex, and the semantics of "queer" are extended and expanded to all groups judged as "heretical" and "pathological" by mainstream concepts (the most powerful evidence is that Mr. Poly, who was executed by public opinion).
Under the barrier of the movement of good and evil, everyone has their own grayscale, bitterness and "exoneration" gold medal, but it is also difficult to collide with a complete subjectivity in a limited space. Their existence is more like to confuse the audience's attention, or output some highlighted lines, and even the most hypocritical headmistress will send relief when she presses the secret on her lips: "Only some people can have it, then it is not happiness, happiness is something anyone can have." ”
A difficult transformation journey
In the discussion around "Monster", there is a voice that is quite interesting: screenwriter Yuji Sakamoto is the one who takes control, and Kore-eda's presence as a director has been greatly weakened.
This point of view, both stemming from the film's fancy textual embellishment, also allows us to reflect on Hirokazu Kore-eda's strengths.
The dead flower pot in "Nobody Knows", the speeding Shinkansen in "Miracle", the fireworks in "Thief Family...... These everyday symbols show the creator's mastery of capturing and refining life. It is the addition of these two actions that creates an unexpected scenery among the trivial branches and vines.
Flower pots in Nobody Knows
That's why Hirokazu Kore-eda's films can be found in the art world and open the door to exploration for ordinary people. It is not difficult for everyone who has accumulated enough experience and experience to understand that truth: the drama of life does not lie in "accidental" intrusion, but in the stroke of idle brushstrokes, bit by bit grows, just as living in peace is also a kind of "resistance".
When this kind of loose aesthetic appeal is integrated with a more regular commercial narrative, the director has to step on a tightrope, while controlling the macro plot, without burying his ability to see the big from the small. If "The Third Suspect" can still reveal a little determination to break out of the cocoon in addition to being a toddler, the reference to the phenomenon of infant trafficking in the previous work "The Broker" has a sense of vanity of punching on cotton because of the strong "all good people" setting.
In "Monster", we may be able to remember some remnants of inspiration, such as two boys hiding in the carriage playing a guessing game, the brass horn that blew several times, and the windows that could not be wiped clean on a typhoon day. However, they were more like strongly-designed recipes, hastily sprinkled with some seasoning, and then allowed to be covered by choking fumes.
The windows of the car that can't be wiped clean in "Monster".
After making up a circle of interviews with the director, I gradually realized that this seemingly capricious and trouble-saving approach represents the rejection and disappointment of two creators who are more than half a hundred years old to a certain extent in adult society. is like the torrential raindrops that fall on every adult at the end of the film, and punish them to contrast how brave the children's "pure love" is.
But the contradiction lies in the fact that since the creator is well aware that "people are not black and white", it is reasonable to take a step forward and consider, can the "monster" be saved by removing the toxin called misunderstanding? In other words, does such a world really exist? The defense of happiness and the confirmation of self-worth must be made possible in the repeated game between the self and the world, rather than letting them shout "time goes back, the universe collapses" and other seemingly romantic but boundless empty words.
intends to turn the pen into the depths of society, but cannot jump out of the trap set by himself, in addition to the decline of directorial control, which is also related to the constraints of Yuji Sakamoto's first involvement in the film industry. He became famous in the embryonic period of the Internet, and he is best at copying all kinds of urban people. "Banyuan-style golden sentences" once swept social media and became a portrayal of a certain emotional philosophy.
It's a pity that throughout his screenwriting works in recent years, whether it is "Bouquet of Love" or "Soybean Field Forever and Three Ex-Husbands", they are all invisibly infiltrating pop (Internet celebrity) culture, and the once pleasant fragmented thoughts have become more and more fast-eating, with more overflowing ingenuity. The same is true of "Monster", the script that should have been carried in the form of a unit drama was forcibly swallowed up by a three-part structure, and in this contradiction between "everyday" and "non-everyday", the film loses its aftertaste, leaving only dramatic and intense slices.
Aqua, Ryuichi Sakamoto
As for Douban's high score of 8.6, it is difficult to describe how many professors (Ryuichi Sakamoto) and the light of the subject matter have been stained. But in any case, everyone who is really touched should put the spirit of harvest into practice after reading it. Especially in this age of deception and vulnerability, even a glimmer of light can bring us a few inches closer to that beautiful new world of verdant greenery and without the malice of a torrent.