★ ★ ★ ★ ½
If you’ve ever been a fan of Doctor Who, you may vaguely remember a David Tennant episode called ‘Fear Her’.
It revolved around a young girl struggling with loneliness and familial
disruption, channelled through drawings which came to life via an alien host.
From the barest glance, A Monster Calls resembles
an extrapolated parallel to this story: Lewis MacDougall plays Conor O’Malley,
a shy and bullied preteen whose mother (Felicity Jones) is suffering from
terminal cancer, whose father (Toby Kebbell) is distanced by continent and
circumstance, and whose grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) is uptight and uncaring.
Conor is met not by an alien, but a fantastical tree monster (voiced by
Liam Neeson), who springs from the boy’s drawings. The Monster promises to
visit Conor three times, each encounter packed with a myth or legend. Upon the
fourth visit, it will demand a story from the boy, a tale that will prove to be
his ‘truth’.
For those who require more persuasion than references to a
mediocre episode of British television, allow me another analogy: picture The Iron Giant filtered through the
operatic spectacles of Guillermo Del Toro. Getting the picture yet? This is a
boy and beast tale at its most thoroughly cinematic, where the power comes from
a seamless combination of beautiful performances and truly fantastical
film-making. Whilst MacDougall carries himself with the tenacity of the young Harry Potter leads from all those years
ago, eagerly pulling at our heartstrings, Oscar Faura’s cinematography soars
wondrously. As Felicity Jones brings me to tears for the second time this month simply by hugging someone, Fernando Velázquez’ score delivers the
second blow. And, as the Monster brings rooftops tumbling down upon the
landscape, so to do Liam Neeson’s words send tears cascading down our faces.
Yeah, it’s a tough one, this: if you’ve glanced at reviews,
poster quotes or reactionary tweets, you may pick up your tickets confidently, sure you won't cry. Speaking from extremely personal experience, you’re
very much mistaken. I detected a similar outpouring from my fellow cinema-goers;
we’re talking everything from squelchy sniffing to full-on flannel face. This
isn’t emotional manipulation on the film’s part, God no: it’s an impossibly
well-crafted piece of catharsis, earned through the simplest admission. Endless
empty thrillers still can’t mar the gravelly power of Neeson’s delivery, not
least during the sublimely-crafted animated sequences, where fairy tales are
restored to their cinematic glory and their interpretations left entirely to
the imagination. Such a statement seems rather obvious, but after the trite and
misjudged retellings of latter-day Disney, it’s a relief not to have ‘the other
side’ of these recitals spelled out so blindingly.
If there are any weak links to be found in this glowing
chain of interlocking visceral-technical achievements, they’re to be found on
the side-lines: the boys that bully Conor deliver some very stilted and
swappable dialogue (like many others, the film remains blind to the true
complexities of playground trauma), while Sigourney Weaver – surely blessed
with one of the most recognisable voices in film – has her weapon of choice
scuttled by a flimsy accent. Perversely, it’s a scene in which she barely
utters a single sound that redeems inflectional faults with immeasurable,
lacerating power.
When moments of near-silence hammer our hearts as brutally
as MacDougall's loudest cry of anguish, the film’s greatest success is revealed. At
its heart, this is an uncomplicated, uncontaminated fable that insists on the
emotion of escapism over any pseudo-psychological
explanations, reducing the hideous messiness of pain into a pure and profound search
for truth. The Monster’s emphasis on hearing Conor’s story is not a demand, but
an act of empowerment; the permission given to every scared, lonely child to
scream and rage and sob, to admit their quietest truth at thunderous volume.
