Monster

Steve is seventeen, a good student, and wants to make films; he takes a cinema class at school and takes notes constantly. One day he is arrested. A man was killed during a robbery at a shop and Steve is said to have kept watch. The trial begins. He does not accept the charge. The narrative runs three times together: the courtroom, the days in jail and his life before. Steve tells the events as if they were a film he is making, and that sets the form. Anthony Mandler directs. Kelvin Harrison Jr. plays Steve and Jennifer Ehle his lawyer; Jeffrey Wright and Jennifer Hudson are in the cast. The source is Walter Dean Myers's novel, which is widely taught in American schools. The film was shown at Sundance under another name and its distribution came years later. The matter it works at is not whether he is guilty but how someone appears in court; as the lawyer says, the jury reaches its decision by looking at other things. Its best sections are in the courtroom; the testimonies do not agree and the narrative does not say which is true. Kelvin Harrison Jr.'s playing carries the film. Its limit is form; the film class strand and the visual play sometimes scatter the weight of the narrative. Who it is for: viewers who like courtroom drama and the work of young actors. Who it is not for: the structure is loose, the narrative goes little beyond familiar arguments, and the ending is contested.