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Notes from Underground

  And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment.  Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
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Hope

To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.-- Erich Fromm


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Monster (2023)




Lovingly detailed and accented by an aching score from Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died in March, “Monster” is one of the finest films of the year, and its structure — like its circle of characters — carries secrets that can only be unraveled through patience and empathy

Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda (“Broker,” “Shoplifters”) and written by Yuji Sakamoto, “Monster” opens as Minato (Soya Kurokawa), a sensitive preteen, begins fifth grade. His single mom, Saori (Sakura Ando), grows concerned when Minato comes home distressed and with injuries. She soon casts blame on his teacher, Hori (Eita Nagayama), who is fired over the accusation.

The action begins with a building burning to the ground, a dramatic blaze against the night sky, and this spectacular event makes a convenient starting point when the action is replayed. The building is the site of a sleazy hostess-bar, and a scandalous rumour runs around that local schoolteacher Mr Hori (Eita Nagayami) was one of the customers. Single mum Saori (Sakura Ando) has heard this tale and is thus perhaps already disposed to think ill of the man; her son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) then comes home from school saying that Mr Hori has humiliated him with a bizarre “pig brain” insult (or has Minato appropriated that insult from elsewhere?) and the teacher also appears to have hit him.



Furious Saori storms into the office of the principal (Yûko Tanaka) – a woman already almost catatonic with grief for a dead grandson – demanding an explanation, and the school attempts to fob her off with a bizarrely formal, legalistic apology, complete with bowing from Hori and three colleagues. This is an event so utterly insincere and irrelevant to her request for a clear explanation that Saori only becomes more livid. But then mumbling Mr Hori snaps, and tells her that Minato was bullying another child: sensitive, imaginative Eri (Hinata Hiiragi).

Monster isn’t about what it initially appears to be; the narrative peels away the diversionary misapprehensions until it arrives at its emotional kernel of truth, and the film offers us hope, not despair. The performances from Sakura Ando, Eita Nagayami and the boys have a calm frankness and integrity. As for the story itself, it is arguably a little contrived with a thicket of mystery that perhaps didn’t need to be so dense. But this is a film created with a great moral intelligence and humanity.

Monster is a movie that does not render up its meanings easily in general, and its repeated motif is to replay the same events from a different viewpoint; in another type of film this might deliver the smooth and gratifying narrative click of a twist-reveal falling into place, but here it has a way of raising more questions than answers.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/17/monster-review-hydra-of-modern-morals-and-manners 


Kore-eda: sexual identity not the focus in film 'Monster'

 


    1. Monster scored 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
      Monster scored 8.1 out of 10 on IMDb.

    1. Release date: November 22, 2023 (USA)
      Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
      Cinematography: Ryuto Kondo
      Music by: Ryuichi Sakamoto






    5. https://gemini.google.com/share/bec208ec6304








Synopsis & Narrative Structure

    1. The film is divided into three distinct acts, each following the same timeline but through a different set of eyes. It begins with a fire at a building in a small Japanese city and ends with a powerful rainstorm.

Act I: The Mother (Saori)

    1. Saori, a widowed single mother, becomes increasingly concerned when her son, Minato, begins acting strangely—cutting his own hair, losing a shoe, and claiming his brain has been replaced by a "pig's brain." She eventually suspects his teacher, Mr. Hori, of physical and emotional abuse. When she confronts the school, she is met with a wall of cold, robotic apologies that feel like a cover-up, painting Mr. Hori as a villain.

Act II: The Teacher (Mr. Hori)

    1. The perspective shifts to Mr. Hori. We see that many of the events Saori perceived as abuse were actually misunderstandings or Hori's attempts to intervene in what he believed was Minato bullying a smaller classmate, Yori. Hori is a well-meaning but socially awkward man whose life is ruined by rumor and the school's desire to protect its reputation over the truth.

Act III: The Children (Minato & Yori)

    1. The final act reveals the heart of the film. It follows the secret friendship between Minato and Yori. We learn that Yori is being abused by his alcoholic father for not being "masculine," and Minato is struggling with his own growing romantic feelings for Yori. Their "strange" behavior was a private language and a search for a place where they could be "reborn" into a world that accepts them.







Music: The Legacy of Ryuichi Sakamoto

    1. The film features the final original score by the world-renowned composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.

      • Composition: Due to his declining health, Sakamoto was unable to score the entire film from scratch. He provided two new piano pieces and allowed Kore-eda to use compositions from his final album, 12.

      • Atmosphere: The music is minimalist and elegiac, often highlighting the isolation of the characters and the natural beauty of the Japanese landscape.




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