A Monster Calls (1h 48m, 12A)

It has become too easy, I believe, to dismiss films for children, in much the same way as books for children, upon one of which A Monster Calls is based, as lesser, shallower works, compared to cinema and indeed books for adults. Yet, A Monster Calls deals, through its fantastical story of a boy and the monster who he calls, with one of the most delicate subjects that any media could tackle with a gentleness, a care and indeed a sensitivity that few adult films upon the same subject have ever reached.

Based upon the children's novel by Patrick Ness, (itself based upon a concept by Siobhan Dowd, whose death from cancer before the completion of the book echoes that of the protagonist's mother) and with illustrations by Jim Kay, whose visual style heavily influences the look of the titular Monster, the film interweaves the visits of the Monster, (at precisely 12:07 AM or PM) with the young Conor O'Malley (played by  Lewis MacDougall) coming to terms with his mother, (played by a determined if physically fragile Felicity Jones)' mortality. Conor is, like his mother, artistic, isolated from the majority of his classmates and bullied by the others, and often has to fend for himself and look after his ailing mother, and it is into his art that he often retreats. Rarely indeed has the creative process been as beautifully rendered; indeed the film's opening credits are the first uses of the often breathtaking shots of someone simply drawing, painting (with great washes of blue, black and red, colours that appear throughout the film's visual pallet, flooding across the screen), whilst Conor's drawing, even down to a strangely beautiful shot in which he sharpens his pencil, camera within the sharpener, is shot and framed beautifully.

The titular monster, when he arrives, all booming, if strangely comforting Irish brogue, that can switch between true anger and a gentle softness, delivered by the ever-welcome Liam Neeson, is a wonder to behold, his treeish body, his branching hair, and altogether his realness and physicality-rarely has cinema made such a fantastical creature seem not only real, but greatly sympathetic despite his monstrousness. Yet, much in the way that Bird's Iron Giant (by way of Hughes' original novel), represents heroism and the thawing of the Cold War, so the Monster represents both Conor's creativity, and his inner anger and fear at the impending mortality of his mother. There are several sequences in which the Monster spectacularly destroys rooms, buildings, an entire school assembly hall, only to reveal, to great effect in one particular scene, to be the work of Conor himself. The Monster, however, is also a story-teller, and it is the first two of his three stories that are the film's visual highpoint.

Both stories are lushly animated, with a painterly, watercolour treatment, often influenced by the art of both Kay and indeed Conor and his mother, where the Monster's two (highly allegorical) stories shift through scene by scene, negative space opening up to reveal a figure dressed in black or red paint dripping down to form something-in the best possible way, it is like a child's richly illustrated storybook coming to life, not just in its visual style, but in the very way many of the figures look, often featureless aside from their clothes and clearly identifiable from each other.  Certainly, both of the Monster's stories are perhaps the best use of animation in a live action film since the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' Javanese-style puppets. In a scene of righteous destruction, the Monster even brings Conor into one of these illustrated scenes, all watercolour, and moving watercolour at that, sky, dark inky chimney stacks in the city beyond, and even the Monster himself seems more simplistically rendered, as though he too is part of the tale and its visual style.

Yet, the Monster's tales seem to subvert the often simplistic narrative of children's stories-for the Monster, there is not the simplistic right and wrong, of good princes and evil stepmothers-as he himself says, plainly: “There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.” So it is for many of the characters in A Monster Calls-the severe, houseproud Grandmother, played by an often icy Sigourney Weaver, is not a monster but a mother and grandmother concerned for her daughter and worried about her grandson, Conor's father, whilst absent, and seemingly remarried, is still concerned about his ex-wife's declining health and his son. Felicity Jones' Lizzie is, despite her illness, a woman determined to stay strong for her son; an early scene of them watching the 1933 King Kong on a projector belonging to her father does more in its visual story-telling around their relationship of two kindred creative spirits than many more mature pieces of cinema

Even Conor himself is a more complex figure, as the final story, told by himself to the Monster reveals. At the heart of this film, A Monster Calls is the story of a boy trying to make sense of his mother's mortality, a mortality he struggles to accept, and his escapism into his creativity and into stories, not only to make sense of his predicament, but to accept it and move on-this it does better than almost any other film about loss, particularly loss at a young age, without the mawkishness or heartstring-tugging all too familiar in films with this theme. Instead, it does so from the simple effectiveness of its story, the strength of its performances, and in its mixing of reality and the fantastical to tell its beautiful and heartbreaking tale, that, like its monster, is a wild and rare beast indeed.

Rating: Recommended