Film Review #76: MONSTER

Before the premiere of Monster, there was very little information about its plot: a loving single mother whose son starts behaving abnormally, and a teacher who is accused of bullying at school… The teaser of the characters might seem like a classic composition for a film about school violence, but Kore-eda's ambitions clearly go beyond that.

《怪物》上映之初，各大电影网站对其剧情的介绍似乎都只有寥寥几笔:爱孩子的坚强单身母亲，行为异常的儿子以及被指控校园霸凌的老师.....这一人物结构看似是讲述校园暴力题材作品的经典构成，但是枝裕和的野心显然不止停留于此。

Film still from Monster

Retaining Kore-eda’s iconic style of infusing details of everyday life and realistic character dialogue into the narrative of the story, the film starts out with an almost normal narrative structure, but soon unfolds different perspectives, wrapping the truth in multiple layers.

保留了在前几部作品中将日常生活细节和平实的人物对白渗透进故事叙述脉络中的风格，电影在这一基础上设置了精巧的叙述结构。叙事通过三个主要角色的不同视角铺开，将故事的真相包裹在错综迷离的叙事中。

If you've seen the Japanese drama Brush Up Life earlier this year, or Kore-eda's 2018 Cannes Palme d’Or Shoplifters, you won't be unfamiliar with Ando Sakura, who plays a single mother in Monster. After suspecting that her son has been subjected to violence by his homeroom teacher, she goes to the campus to investigate, only to be stonewalled by the school leaders’ bizarre and absurdly repetitive bowing and apologising. The limited information given to the audience through the mother's point of view and Ando Sakura's powerful acting heighten the film's suspense.

 如果你看过今年年初大火的日剧《重启人生》, 或是让是枝裕和获得2018年戛纳奖的《小偷家族》,就一定不会对饰演单亲妈妈的安藤樱所陌生。母亲因为前往校园调查，却被校方诡异而荒诞的重复鞠躬道歉行为所搪塞。仅仅通过母亲视角展开的叙事所给予观众有限的信息以及安藤樱的表演方式都加大了电影的悬疑张力。

Film still from Monster

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

The film plays with the audience's expectation of the victim from the very beginning: in the first layer, the victims are undoubtedly the single mother and her child bullied by the teacher. This impression is reversed as the narrative perspective shifts. The second layer of the film puts the spotlight on the homeroom teacher played by Nagayama Eita as the ‘victim’. The young primary school teacher, who in the earlier part of the movie was considered to have a private life, but was seemingly violent to his students, suffers false accusations, similar to what the protagonist ofThe Hunt (2012) experiences. 

电影似乎一开始就在挑战观众们对于受害者的“期待”: 第一部分中受害者无疑是单亲母亲和被教师霸凌的孩子。这一既定印象随着叙述视角的转换遭到了反转。第二部分中.在前一视角中被认为私生活不检点以及对学生实施校园暴力的小学老师实则遭遇了和电影《狩猎》中主角一样的错误指控。

Film still from Monster

The unexplained parts of the first two stories are slowly unravelled in the third, which is told from a child's point of view. With his hair cut short in secret, stones and mud in his glass of water, and the slightly absurd question of whether a human brain can be swapped with a pig's brain throughout the story, Minato's irrational behaviour is in fact, a way of guarding the secret of Yori, a boy who doesn't conform to the society's standards of masculinity. This last part is where the viewers gain clarity of everything that has transpired, and despite being two thirds into the movie, it is shocking and heart-wrenching.

 宛如抽丝剥茧一般，前两个故事中无法解释的部分在第三个以孩子视角展开的故事中缓慢地揭开面纱。偷偷剪短头发；水杯中的石子和泥沙；以及贯穿全篇的“人脑是否可以与猪脑互换”这一稍显荒诞的问题，男孩Minato的种种不合乎常理的行为实则是为了守护行为不符合社会对男子气概规训的男孩Yori的秘密。 

Kore-eda shows the hidden relationship between the characters through similar shots. The shot of the two boys interacting in the tram is of a similar angle to the shot of the teacher interacting with his girlfriend in Part 2, suggesting an ambiguity between the boys that goes beyond friendship and their exploration of gender identity and sexuality.

 是枝裕和显然有心希望通过相似的镜头展现人物间的隐秘关系。两个男孩在电车中互相触碰的镜头与第二部分中老师和女友互动的镜头角度相似，暗示着男孩之间超越友谊的暧昧情愫以及两人对性别身份的探索。

 According to Judith Butler, the “normalisation within the heterosexual matrix requires and institutes ‘male’ and ‘female’ to follow the expressive attributes as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. Yori Hoshikawa, the boy who is called a "monster" by his classmates, is clearly a victim of this heterosexual matrix.

 朱迪·巴特勒认为，"（社会）异性恋矩阵中的正常化要求并规定'男性'和'女性'遵循'男性'和'女性'的表达属性。被同学称为 "怪物 "的男孩Yori显然是这一异性恋矩阵的受害者。

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About the Author:  Shirwen has always been an English literature student, and is sometimes, a theatre kid trying to find out more about what she can do in film studies. She's also a Chick-flicks lover, so maybe you can find her fan fiction when surfing the Internet.