A beautiful jigsaw puzzle of a film that will ultimately move you

MONSTER ★★★
(M) 127 minutes

The Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda is almost too artful for his own good: there’s something at once soothing and wearying about his knowing, sentimental style, which hasn’t changed much over the past 30 years.

The measured pacing instructs us that the story will unfold in its own good time (Kore-eda edits his own films, which typically run for two hours). Contemplative wide shots alternate with cosy enclosed spaces, often filled with the kind of clutter generated by children: scattered clothes and toys, drawings tacked to the walls.

Much of the art goes into finding ways to show how things stand between the characters both physically and symbolically – for instance, through who is placed higher and lower on screen, and how this shifts around. Or if everyone is on the same level, that too carries significance, especially in scenes involving both children and adults.

Monster, Kore-eda’s latest, is characteristic in all these respects, though for once he didn’t write it himself. The script by noted TV writer Yuji Sakamoto has a tricky structure: it’s divided into three parts, each covering the same period from a different angle. Thus the movie becomes a jigsaw puzzle, where we’re shown a scene from one character’s perspective and later have to adjust our understanding when we see the other side.

The initial premise bears a resemblance to the novel and TV series The Slap. Widowed drycleaner Saori (Sakura Ando) learns from her son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) that his fifth-grade teacher (Eita Nagayama) physically attacked him and also called him a “pig brain” (an early instance of the “monster” motif, woven into the film in several ways).

Incensed, Saori heads off for a meeting at the school, where she receives a formal but not wholly satisfying apology. Rather than sticking with the ethics of classroom discipline, however, the story moves into other areas: significant characters include the school principal (Yuko Tanaka), who’s recently experienced a bereavement of her own, and one of Minato’s classmates (Hinata Hiiragi), whom he’s said to have bullied in turn.

There’s a sense that the ambiguity is the point. For instance, the same physical gesture can appear suspect or harmless, depending on where you stand, and witnesses can come to different conclusions without anyone simply being wrong.

The film also has a much more definite subject, but this takes so long to emerge that to address it in detail feels like a spoiler.