Alternate Best Actor 2023: Eita Nagayama & Sōya Kurokawa in Monster

Eita Nagayama did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Michitoshi Hori nor did Sōya Kurokawa for portraying Minato Mugino in Monster.

Monster depicts a child's mistreatment in school from his mother's, his teacher's and his own perspective.
 

Although the film isn't precisely Rashomon, in terms of literally depicting the version of the reality of each storyteller, we do only see from the perspective of each individual which each tells a different story. We begin with the mother Saori (Sakura Ando), a single mother who is trying to figure out what is going on with her son who begins to act strangely and she begins to suspect that her teacher is abusing him based on some vague clues and rumors. Nagayama and Kurokawa don't give different performances in this section, rather they give performances without context. Kurokawa's performance is very distant from this boy, which is simply hard to understand as we only see what his mother sees. There's occasionally a smile from him, but mostly he physically seems to push himself away and hide, while asking these odd questions in kind of a disjointed way. There is something off about him but we don't know what it is yet. There's even moments of self-harm where Kurokawa's performance is alarming because of how random he is, so you have no idea, there's clearly something going on, but you cannot tell from what Saori sees.Nagayama  on the other hand we first see as he comes into the first parent teacher conference where he seems oddly stiff with his apology being weirdly forced out of him. The next we see him he's suddenly aggressive and antagonistic towards Saori, blaming Minato for being a bully in the classroom. Suddenly Nayayama makes Hori seem on an edge, with every word being an attack against Saori and her son, where she is equally taken aback and as aggressive in confronting the seemingly horrible teacher who has no regrets for the situation. Of course the moments for both Nagayama and Kurokawa are moments that are their characters, but we don't know why any of it, so it just seems to be random moments of enigmatic emotion.  

All of this changes immediately as we shift to Hori's story where instantly Nagayama suggests a completely different man than we presumed we knew. We find him as he seems like a likeable enough man with a very low key performance from Nagayama. There's a relaxed manner about him, and a certain bright outgoing style as he begins his first days in teaching at the school. His performance is earnest and sincere, and suddenly you wonder what's the situation as he seems to be a good teacher. Now when the first complaint comes from Saori, we are as taken aback as he is in the complaint and Nagayama's performance portrays genuine confusion. To the point that we readily empathize with the man, since what we've seen from his perspective is just a normal man, with a girlfriend, living his life as normally as anyone else. Nagayama doesn't suggest any hidden demons, rather just a normal man trying to do his job. We now get the context for the first meeting where basically the rest of the staff, including his principal who has undergone her own recent emotional distress, all suggest that Hori leave all the talking to them and that he just apologize and get it over with. In turn we know now what was going on in his earlier performance where we now see a man who is stiff because he's just trying to follow orders, and perfunctory in his apology because he frankly doesn't entirely know what he is apologizing for. We see Nagayama's performance still at a distance from Hori's perspective, as this child he finds throwing things randomly in class and locking another boy in the classroom. In both moments Kurokawa just seems strangely emotional while Nagayama presenting a very real concern from the teacher in both instances. There's the confusion of just coming into the situation and just an earned frustration over the sudden development he doesn't know what to do with given the boy's behavior seems so random to him. 

What this becomes slowly for Hori is 2012's The Hunt, as from his perspective now we see that he has not been abusing the boy, nor been telling the boy he has a "pig's brain" which is one of the claims around Minato. So we see the fallout as he becomes continually questioned by his coworkers and even hounded by the press for his supposed behavior. And Nagayama's performance is great because he still plays it absolutely straight in showing the sense of confusion mixed in with distress. Presenting so well the growing sense of exasperation over the situation as it seems just one thing after another is going wrong. Every moment where he explains himself, Nagayama brings an honesty but also this almost timid reservation by someone just being unable to know exactly how to deal with so much at once. His performance expresses this curiosity to the subject, though with the confusion always mixed in as he is clearly trying to figure out what exactly is going on but is still too lost. He creates the right sense of this emotional constriction in his reactions of the man being stuck within basically being seen as this terrible child abuser, and even more as greater rumors begin to swarm around him, leaving his girlfriend to leave him as well. Nagayama portrays well in each reaction that frustration from just one thing after another, going from just confusion to genuine distress in his performance that so naturally creates the degradation of the man's spirit from one thing after another. Now we know the context of his more aggressive interaction with his mother, because we now see the man pushed to anger from one thing after another going wrong from him, all of it built around what he knows to be lies about his conduct. So we are able to see from that early interaction that viciousness wasn't from a horrible teacher just dismissing a parent who he knows is calling him out for doing wrong, rather it is the anger of the man who sees the cause of all this growing list of mistreatments of him, making Saori the ideal target for his ire. With him being fired now, we see it as an injustice and sense then his desperation as he returns to the school demanding answers from Minato Nagayama's work is moving because we see how this normal man has been pushed to this almost literal brink by the end of his version, and all by letting us empathize with the truth of the matter. Until we see Hori discover the truth of the situation, where I think Nagayama is great in convincingly showing just this passionate teacher suddenly, who when his student is in danger, there isn't anything that stops him, rather just earnest desire to do right. It is a brief note in terms of screen time but well delivered.

 
That leaves us with Kurokawa's performance of Minato, which per Kore-eda's ways, the fact that it is a child giving this performance isn't something you even need to think about or consider. As always, the child performances are as natural a part of his films as any other feature, there's no awkwardness, no showing off qualities, he's just a real person like everyone else in the film. Kurokawa's performance of course revealing itself is part of the essential truth and power of the piece, as he's the last part of the puzzle, giving we only saw Minato first as the apparently strange self-destructive son and then the troublesome student. Well all of this makes sense once we actually meet Minato outside of the gaze of the adults in his life. Where immediately we see so much more, and some truly great acting from a child, because it's what is probably asked the least of a child actor of any kind, which is very subtle acting. As we explore his relationship with a fellow student, who is picked on relentlessly by other classmates, Yori (Hinata Hiiragi). Kurokawa's performance in these early interactions are able to convey the peer pressure just in his work along with the genuine interest in interacting with the other boy in certain moments. His performance created the sense of conflict where his very quiet work still, but now opens us up into his perspective so powerfully. As we see the ease of comfort when interacting with just Yori initially, but also this sort of dour manner of constantly being told by others to stay away from him. This goes so far as to first being pulled into a bullying act, before then trying to get attention away from him by throwing things in the room. This time, we see the context, and Kurokawa's performance brings this emotional desperation suddenly with purpose as he tries to help Yori through the act, rather than some senseless act it appeared to be the first time. 

We see something radically different outside of the school where there is such a power in Kurokawa's performance by finally not showing the withdrawn child so stuck seemingly within his constraining emotions as we see Minato and him go off to play together. Kurokawa's so much more expressive and his performance naturally shows really the joy the boy can have when allowed to be himself without any of the forced pressures of the school culture and expectations of others. Instead we see just the real sense of fun of the two boys as they play together, with their favorite spot being an abandoned train. Their performances together are so great by being so natural in these moments of play where you see just how much they are getting out of it, compared to what it was that we saw in school, or particularly what we saw of Minato in every other perspective of this story. There is happiness and there is such a tremendous impact in Kurokawa's performance by just simply expressing that happiness without reservation. But that isn't all there is to this performance and the degree of nuance of the work is what is so remarkable. When we see for example Minato look upon Yori getting locked into the bathroom by bullies, to ensure that Mr. Hori is letting himself out, Kurokawa's performance shows the concern but also some of the degree of stress of the constriction he is placed into in the school. This isn't at all simple child performance as every moment we don't just know what Minato is going through from Kurokawa's performance, we now know so much more of the textures of his thoughts because that can be seen in Kurokawa's performance. A performance that frequently bridges this certain gap between the child and the adult. His performance is neither that of being just the adult in the child's body, nor is he just a child taking things in a more limited way. He's both in such a convincing way that brings such a depth to the character.  

We see this explored all the more as the film becomes a MUCH better version of Close, as the boy's friendship may in fact be a romance, though that is something that neither one of them fully seems to understand. And that is where the performances are so important, where it really are portraying exceptionally complicated emotion between the two, as both actors feel so authentic in these moments, although a little different, as much as he might also not be able to verbalize it Yori is a bit more confident in himself, despite the bullying, where we see in Minato a lack of certainty, despite just how genuine their interactions are that only ever denote this ease of connection between the two at every step. In a key moment where Yori embraces Minato, Kurokawa is great in portraying the sort of running through moment of emotions and the unnatural return to basically the expected state we see at school when he runs away. Now we are given the context to the self-destructive boy we saw through Saori's story, but now we have context. We are though given the intimacy of his performance, where it isn't just distant emotion, but we see rather the real emotional heartache in Minota in these moments and the actions of the boy as filled with self-doubt and shame. A great moment in Kurokawa's performance is when he admits his lies about Hori to the school principal, who basically offers therapy for him by playing a trombone with her as a cathartic act to "blow away" their secrets as a way to embrace the emotion and allow himself to be happy. And Kurokawa's work is just gradually within the scene going from that self-imposed restriction to finding hints of joy again as he seems to embrace the act and in the moment embrace himself. Kind of single scene "fixes" can be tricky, but this feels wholly earned by Kurokawa's performance that reveals just how much this singular act let's him be him again. Kurokawa delivering a great performance that articulates every step of this of this complicated story with a natural ease but also such poignancy.

(Nagayama)

(Kurokawa)