Review: 'Monster' Interrogates the Meaning of the Word and Finds Marvels

What is a monster? The teacher who humiliates a student? The schoolyard bully? The snowplow mother who wrecks lives? Or anyone who's different in trivial ways that are assigned too much meaning?

"Shoplifters" director Kore-eda Hirokazu interrogates the word and reveals its deceptive superficialities. We're introduced to the film's characters – single mother Saori (Sakura Ando), her son Minato (Soya Kurokawa), Minato's classmate Yori (Hinata Hiiragi),who is considered by most of the school to be an outcast, and the boys' teacher, Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama), about whom rumors soon circulate (he's supposedly an arsonist; he dates escorts; he strikes and insults his students).

Hirokazu works from a script by Yûji Sakamoto that traces the story from the point of view of each of these characters. Each version begins at the same place – a big fire in a building – and recounts major plot points, but also fills in sections of the larger picture that are not available to the other characters. Tellingly, when the word "monster" comes up in these different contexts, it's applied to different characters. Parents are monsters from the point of view of the school's administrators and teachers; teachers and administrators are monsters from Saori's point of view; and as for Minato and Yori, what at first seems to be a contentious relationship is eventually revealed to be something much different and more complexly layered. Heartbreakingly, while adults cast aspersions at one another, Minato views himself as the monster.