Monster (2021)

I can name a handful of movies in which Kelvin Harrison Jr. gives mind-blowing performances. He just never seems to give them in movies that get much attention. Monster is the latest in this pattern. Passed down and passed over this film never got the attention it deserved or Harrison Jr.'s performance did. One of these days he'll be in a movie that people see and he'll be a star. 

Supported by a great supporting cast, especially Wright who is one of the masters of his craft, Harrison Jr. manages to make his character rich and complicated, human and a cipher. Mandler, whose experience is mostly with music videos, makes an impressive debut managing to tell a compelling story visually while also structuring that story in layers that make it more complicated than one might expect at first. 

Set around the trial of a young man who may or may not have committed a crime, Monster tells us a story that relies on us making assumptions and then questioning those assumptions. No matter what sort of assumptions you might make, you are asked to think about them and reflect on them. The film is an interesting exercise in exploring the concept or "innocent until proven guilty." As the audience what do we believe, as we watch the film, as it progresses? Do we extend a presumption of innocence? Do we seek our confirmation bias. The film works as a fascinating thought experiment but then also explores the experience of many young black men in America. It is a unique approach to telling this story and for me it worked so effectively. 

Mandler also plays with Monster self-consciously being a film. His lead character is a film maker who is often shown making a movie. There are discussions set in a film class. Monster is shot partially as a piece of film, sometimes making references to itself as film. For me this also worked by effectively pulling me out of the traditional means of taking in these narratives and making me think of things differently as I watched. We often don't want our films to remind us we are watching a movie, instead we are to be lost in it for its run time. But here we are forced to look at that and it makes the experience different than we may have expected. 

What I appreciated about Monster was how it wasn't what I expected, how it was about something different than I thought, that it made me think about things differently. And that I want to keep watching what Harrison Jr. does next. 

Monster

Starring: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Jennifer Hudson, Jeffrey Wright, Jennifer Ehle, Tim Blake Nelson, Nasir Jones, Jharrel Jerome, John David Washington, Johnny Coyne, Rakim Meyers, 

Director: Anthony Mandler

Writers: Radha Blank, Cole Wiley, Edward Tyler Nahern