The puzzle has many solutions, most or even all of them “wrong.”

We’re asked to weigh abuse and bullying, gossip, guilt, grief and pathology, all told via five different points of view.

And whatever the viewer decides, on the screen all anyone cares about is the answer to a question posed by a childhood game — “Who’s the ‘Monster?'”

The latest film from Japanese filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu is a return to his “Shoplifters” form. It’s a densely-detailed character study that could pass for a cultural dissertation, a story of a school, a “problem” child, a concerned parent, an accused teacher and an “inhuman,” grief and guilt-stricken principal.

Sakura Ando of “Shoplifters” plays a widowed dry-cleaner raising fifth grader Minato (Soya Kurkawa) by herself. She dotes and indulges her sometimes dangerously impulsive boy, dealing with his questions about his dead father (they celebrate his birthday with a cake and a prayer) and wondering what happened to one of his shoes, where this or that bruise came from and where he got the idea that kids could have “pig’s brains.”

Jumping out of her moving car is the last straw.

“Are you being bullied?” she wants to know (in Japanese with English subtitles)? Is it this or that classmate whose name she’s heard? Or is it the teacher, Mr. Hori?

When she settles on Hori as prime suspect, Saori finds herself “handled” by a school, a system and a culture that practices conflict avoidance, not conflict resolution. The principal flees. A “guardian” council of male teachers meet, gang up on her and do a lot of bowing as they hear her out and dodge her questions.

Did he hit my son?

“We have confirmed that there was…contact between the teacher’s hand and Minato’s nose.”

A non-apology apology from this oddball teacher (Eita Nagayama) and rank lying and unemotional deflecting are all she gets from the principal (Yûko Tanaka). But behind the scenes, they scramble to cover this up and get rid of the teacher, who seems increasingly-unhinged in his dealings with the kid.

Then the story shifts to Mr. Hori’s point of view, and things take on a different tone. We soon see another viewpoint from Minato’s smaller pal from school (Hinata Hiiragi), whom mother Saori met and interrogated and whose hard-drinking, bullying single-dad (Akihiro Kakuta) Mr. Hiro unpleasantly encountered during his efforts to clear his name.

And we drift into the gutted despair of the grieving principal’s life, catching behind-the-scenes manouvering at the school as the faculty attempt to CYA and spare the institution punishment from above and spare the boy, who if he is labeled a “bully” will never be able to transfer into another school.

“Parents,” they all gripe. “They’re more trouble than the kids these days.”

But Mr. Hori’s problems, which escalate into media coverage and a fiance who ditches him over it, are the furthest from everyone’s mind save for his.

The shifts in whose story we follow aren’t hard to keep up with, although bits and pieces of the cultural immersion make us wonder where the principal is meeting her husband (Jail?), and what role the climactic typhoon is supposed to play in the resolution.

“Monster (Kaibutsu)” is a deliberate film — critic-speak for a tad slow — and sometimes melodramatic, such as having our opening scenes show us a high-rise fire which houses a “hostess club” (sex worker) frequented by this character or that one. A lighter-stick is a clue that travels hither and yon, a dead cat has several interpretations, and so on.

But even its occasional confusing moments add texture to this brittle but touching tale from a unique culture whose characters are still universal “types” and whose problems will be recognizable in any country where they have troubled kids, indulgent parenting, underpaid and unrespected teachers and a flawed system that can’t keep track of everybody’s issues satisfies no one.

Rating: PG-13, violence, bullying, sexuality

Cast: Sakura Ando, Soya Kurokawa, Eita Nagayama, Hinata Hiiragi and
Yûko Tanaka.

Credits: Kore-eda Hirokazu, scripted by Yûji Sakamoto. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:05