Monster
In the words of Hirokazu Kore-eda:
“When I choose child actors, I chose them for their personalities. And then I work with their own vocabulary, so l'm not imposing text or dialogue on them: I'm just receiving.”
This film is just kore-eda doing kore-eda things. Make heart warming and heart shattering films that you can find yourself thinking about for weeks after. Kore-eda is becoming one of my favorite directors and his latest film is one of his best yet and his most defiantly one of the best films from 2023.
The filmmaking is just incredible. Kore-eda went with a different approach using the rashoman effect and he executed it wonderfully. And the cinematography is just so beautiful.
This film is about finding yourself your loving your true self. It’s LGBTQ themes are quite apparent to. This film handles these topics well and way better than other films when it comes to LGBTQ themes as most of the times it’s just a mess and forced with little to no development.
Even though this film is essentially a modern masterpiece, I found myself bored and disconnected with the film at the beginning of the third act which threw me off for the rest of the film. A rewatch would probably bump up the rating for me.