Tonight I wrote Hirokazu Kore-eda's new film "Monster".
First of all, this ** is not the same as the previous ** of Hirokazu Kore-eda**, and the biggest obvious difference is that it is very afraid of spoilers.
It is no longer like Hirokazu Kore-eda's previous works, the still water flows deeply, and it is not the story that you see but the undercurrent of emotions, and this one has more suspense structure because of Yuji Sakamoto's participation.
This leads to the fact that watching the story for the first time and watching it again after knowing it are likely to be two experiences, and the intensity of emotional impact will be different (which is why many people don't like it).
So if you haven't seen it, it's best to stop here and come back to read the article after watching the film.
The earliest expectations for this film were not only because the director was Hirokazu Kore-eda and the screenwriter Yuji Sakamoto, but also because it won a Queer Palm Award for feature film at the 76th Cannes Film Festival.
This is a public little spoiler, and it already tells us what elements are in this film - this is a ** about sexual minorities.
More precisely, the story of two boys.
Let's start with the titleWhat does Monster refer to?
This is the biggest suspense point of the whole movie, and it also involves the core expression of the movie.
Originally, the story gave an answer, the movie chose the Rashomon structure, and focused on the disappearance of Maino Minato and classmate Iri Hoshikawa (Hiiragi Yota) from three perspectives, and the mystery was directly placed in the child's perspective, which is the third paragraph.
So looking at the structure, the final conclusion that can be drawn is,The monster manifests itself as a festering external ** environment that is in dire need of improvement.
Because in the back, Mai Ye, the child who was originally outlined as a "monster" in the perspective of his mother and teacher is no longer there, everything is just a misunderstanding caused by the deviation of the perspective, and his various abnormalities are just for the friendship between the guard and Hoshikawa under the incomprehension of his classmates, teachers, and family.
This critique is of course the environment, and in particular points to secular stereotypes that do not accept same-sex groups.
But if that's the case, it seems that there are some things that can't be explained, first of all, it doesn't reflect the necessity of this structure, it's not the kind of truth that needs to be buried in the end, and it doesn't seem to be so related to the story line of the mother and teacher.
Secondly, there are some problems in it, which have nothing to do with this topic, and there is no completely closed explanation through the perspective difference, leaving a lot of gaps.
The latter will be put into the text for the time being, and the former will be talked about first.
Why do we have to go back and forth to present different perspectives, complement each other, or contradict each other? Is it just to add suspense, or to cover more topics?
I don't think so.
With this structure, the film not only wants to present grand external causes, but also wants to focus on the individual.
The environment is a monster, and the people who are bred can only be monsters, even if they seem extremely "normal". Put it on the specific characters in the movie, it seems that the mother and teacher are not very related to this ** environment.
The film wants to dissolve this subjective normality through a seemingly subjective narrative, so as to present that in this environment, people unconsciously squeeze each other and ** each other after internalization.
Therefore, everyone's story seems reasonable on its own, and it is precisely by uniting the overall situation and constantly overturning the previous perspective that you can discover their "unconscious".
Let's talk about the mother's line first, she seems to be meticulous to the child, but from the child's perspective, it can be seen that there is basically no mother in his story, and he only feels that his mother "cares about me more" and knows the secret of his father's cheating.
From this inference, you will find that the mother bought a cake to celebrate the birthday of her dead father, explained that the child talked about the current situation with the father, and her state of caring about everything the child seems to be more due to her self-deception and self-distress.
This also explains that after the mother decided that her child had been wronged recently, her approach was not to try to understand the child's heart more, but to put on a professional suit and keep going to school to ask for an explanation.
In those three confrontations, the principal and the atmosphere of the office were portrayed more and more terrifyingBecause for her, all reactions that don't fit her own ideas are "abnormal".Therefore, the people in the school are as stiff as robots, and they will only apologize and shirk responsibility.
The audio-visual also emphasized her excessive nervousness, and compared with the stories of teachers and children, the director gave her more close-up shots.
Everyone was close to her, and their vision was narrower and cramped, emphasizing the sense of trepidation that she magnified everything in front of her.
Another wonderful detail is that the child just told her, "Teacher Poly said that my brain is a pig's brain", but when she asked the school teacher for the crime, she said that the teacher beat the child and added a bunch of potentially trumped-up charges.
In essence, as a single mother, she unconsciously blames others.
Of course, this is directly related to the social environment, and it is mentioned twice in the movie that "single mothers are prone to overstress", once when the teacher told her, and she reacted very loudly.
Once is the source of this sentence, from the teacher's girlfriend who works in a bar, after hearing about his experience of being held accountable by his parents, he casually said so, and then was relayed by the teacher, which shows that this kind of cognition is very common.
When "single mother" has also become a way of motherhood kidnapping, the mother can only try her best to constantly prove her "innocence" and "qualification".
This often leads to her and the increasingly bad environment where the truth is unclear and mutually beneficial.
The same is true of the teacher, who seems innocent, cares about what the child eats, cares about the quarrels between the children, and does not touch a finger against the child.
But when he had an accident with the child, he also tried to assign the responsibility, or blame the child for his own evil, thinking that Mai Ye was bullying Xingchuan, and he was suspected of abusing cats.
Or blame the parents, thinking that Maino's mother is too sensitive and Hoshikawa's father is too neurotic.
He also chose to turn his back on himself to pursue the cause.
His girlfriend once persuaded him that he didn't need to be a good teacher, just be himself, which proved that he was constantly maintaining an image of a "good teacher".
This also stems from the constraints of identity, as long as he makes a little mistake, there is no way out, for example, in this case, the school does not care about the truth, only uses him as a scapegoat. Reporters will rush to report for the sake of heat, and someone will send pig brains to scare him, representing the malicious punishment of the people.
In such an environment, what he needs more than whose fault it is always is to prove that he is right.
From the perspective of the joint children, it can also be seen that the teacher is also a macho (and probably unconscious) perpetrator, and he himself said "You're a man" to the child who lost the game in physical education class, and Hoshikawa said "he will say that I don't look like a boy", and he can't trust him, which is destined to be a part of pushing the children into loneliness and despair.
Hoshikawa's father and principal, who include a few words about alcoholism and domestic violence, are also blaming others, but they are conscious.
Hoshikawa's father told the teacher that he had lost his high-paying job, emphasizing that the child was a "pig brain", and told the child that as long as he was cured, the child's mother would come backThese are all his exploits of the current chaotic environment to exonerate himself for all his bad deeds as a father.
The principal took advantage of his grandson's death to adjust the angle of his own photo with his grandson so that parents could easily see it, and even mentioned it through the mouths of others to win sympathy and forgiveness, so as to absolve himself of responsibility for his indifference to education and children.
Everyone has been created into monsters, consciously or unconsciously, aggravating the darkness of the world.
This raises another question, the two children do not belong to the category of monsters, so what is the meaning of their roles, is it just to show same-sex elements and show a touching emotion?
I don't think so, they are the opposite of monsters.
This relativity does not mean that they are absolutely good or absolutely perfect, but that they are portrayed as more primitive, more ideal human beings.
As for why this is done, I think it can be seen in the context of the whole structure.
The three stories not only have differences in perspective, but also metaphors for the changes in the state of the social environment through the differences of specific individuals.
The first stanza is clearly symbolic of the past, where the mother marks the closed perspective of the human being, who does not care about the child, that is, the minority, or even knows what is going on.
The second stanza symbolizes that now, the teacher discovers the child's hidden poem, realizes their feelings, wants to apologize to the child, and tears a hole in the closed state.
And the third paragraph, which is the child's paragraph, is the future and the solution.
In this sense, the writing of children is a kind of writing of hope.
This is first reflected in the difference in perspective, in the case of mothers and teachers, who only care about how to return their children to "normal", and the children follow their hearts and give the answers they want.
Mai Ye told his mother that it was the teacher who scolded him, and Xingchuan, who was dragged by his mother to be a witness, also said that the teacher beat Mai Ye. And at the teacher's side, Mai Ye admitted that the teacher didn't do anything.
Because they know that this is the answer that adults need, and it is also the only answer that can be said in order to protect their loved ones in an oppressed environment. In the part where Mai Ye plays the flute with the principal, it can also be seen that he feels guilty, even though it is purely out of self-preservation.
But for children, most of the time, they don't have adults in their perspective, only the present, each other, and themselves.
The reason why this section is particularly moving is because it has a back-to-basics color.
It's like Mai Ye, who wants to cut his hair, so he cuts it short.
Xingchuan wanted to tease Mai Ye, so he lied to Mai Ye that there was a cat underground, and the two children pouted and lay on their stomachs, listening to the voice of the "cat", and they didn't need to care what others thought.
They care about nature and the universe, imagination is never left behind, thinking that the universe will expand infinitely and finally**, and then everything will return to the beginning, and the dinosaurs will come back to life.
Their concern for each other also comes first, and in the "who is the monster" guessing game, Hoshikawa describes the animal that Maino is holding, "There is an ultimate, when you are attacked, you will use all your strength, and then give up, which will block the senses." ”
Mai Ye was silent for a moment, showing a somewhat bitter, a little loving smile and said, "Am I Iri Hoshikawa?" ”
This sentence means that although they also have limited perspectives and limited information, all the bullying that Hoshikawa has suffered, and all the soft responses of Hoshikawa, have been seriously received by Maiye.
This can be interpreted not only as the germination of emotions, but also as pure closeness and interaction between people and hearts.
Including them, they can't help but approach, gaze, and hug, which is naturally not limited to some same-sex elements, but grasps and reacts to the true emotions in their hearts.
Such an existence, such a beauty, is in itself an opposition to the "monster" part of the front.
This is not a fairy tale or a utopia at all, but something that can and should be realized.
Finally, let's go back to the previous mention, there are a lot of questions in the movie that have not been explained and answered, and they belong to the open design that I really like.
In the supermarket, why did the principal stretch out his leg and trip the child?
The date between the teacher and his girlfriend, without ***, is it still with his girlfriend in the end?
And finally, did the two children die?
There will be no answers to these questions, but we must know whether we are a mother or a teacher or a child when we see these things and make a prejudgment in our hearts.