A Monster Calls
18/10/17 Filed in: Amazon Prime
This film received very good reviews when it was released and I caught up with it this week on Amazon Prime. I can see why the critics and audiences liked it. It focusses on Conor, a young boy who is struggling to come to terms with his mother's illness while at the same time suffering significant bullying at school. He deals with things with a passive reserve that strikes you as remarkable, the young actor Lewis MacDougall giving a truly impressive performance.
Conor has a recurring dream, involving the church and the large yew tree within a cemetery that is visible from his house. The church collapses and the tree disappears into a yawning hole, and Conor is desperately trying to hold on to somebody on the edge of the opening. He always awakens at what becomes the symbolic time of 12:06.
As his mother's condition worsens he is visited by the Monster, an incarnation from the large tree with internal fires that shine through its eyes. Conor reacts with confusion rather than fear, which is remarkable in the circumstances.
The Monster says it tell him three stories, after which it will be for Conor to tell his own story. Conor at first wants nothing to do with this 'game', but after the first story clearly becomes interested by the allegorical nature of the tale, and the lessons it teaches in terms of how we make morality judgements about people, often hastily and wrongly. The second story describes a parson's rigid beliefs against those of an apothecary, turning the congregation against the man, and thus removing his livelihood. But when the parson is forced to ask the apothecary for help, and doesn't get it, we learn that belief alone is no cure. And the third story considers the feeling of being invisible, and the unexpected outcomes of making oneself more visible. These stories are in fact conditioning Conor to accept what life has in store for him.
When his mother has to be admitted to hospital his grandmother takes him to her house. She is clearly very house-proud, but while there the Monster calls after Conor breaks one of the hands off an antique grandfather clock. This doesn't end well, although he is astonished that he receives no reprimand, as he doesn't when he breaks out from being 'invisible'' in the face of the bullying at school. The Monster's stories are starting to have a significance.
The fourth story, Conor's story, is in fact the allegory of his feelings about his mother's illness, which the Monster insists that Conor verbalises. The nightmare mirrors Conor's real life situation, as he watches his mother lose her battle against cancer. The Monster has been calling because he wanted to prepare Conor for this reality, for the unavoidability of the outcome. Conor wanted the nightmare to end, but its ending will mark another ending, one which Conor is so desperate not to accept.
In the final scenes we see why 12:06 is so significant, and we also learn why the Monster visited Conor. It wasn't a random choice.
This combination of fantasy with very real life emotions seems so natural that the fact that the Monster is obviously a mythical creature hardly registers as you watch the film. It's all about Conor, the Monster is purely a device through which we can explore the boy's emotions in a way that perhaps would have been impossible in a more conventional setting.
When his mother has to be admitted to hospital his grandmother takes him to her house. She is clearly very house-proud, but while there the Monster calls after Conor breaks one of the hands off an antique grandfather clock. This doesn't end well, although he is astonished that he receives no reprimand, as he doesn't when he breaks out from being 'invisible'' in the face of the bullying at school. The Monster's stories are starting to have a significance.
The fourth story, Conor's story, is in fact the allegory of his feelings about his mother's illness, which the Monster insists that Conor verbalises. The nightmare mirrors Conor's real life situation, as he watches his mother lose her battle against cancer. The Monster has been calling because he wanted to prepare Conor for this reality, for the unavoidability of the outcome. Conor wanted the nightmare to end, but its ending will mark another ending, one which Conor is so desperate not to accept.
In the final scenes we see why 12:06 is so significant, and we also learn why the Monster visited Conor. It wasn't a random choice.
This combination of fantasy with very real life emotions seems so natural that the fact that the Monster is obviously a mythical creature hardly registers as you watch the film. It's all about Conor, the Monster is purely a device through which we can explore the boy's emotions in a way that perhaps would have been impossible in a more conventional setting.