Godzilla -- Minus One

 Godzilla - Minus One is a Japanese kaiju or giant monster movie.  The  picture's peculiar name signifies that this movie is a prequel to the very first installment in the long-running franchise of kaiju films, Godzilla, King of Monsters (Ichiru Honda, 1956).  Honda's original film is a grim, highly effective horror movie that exploits anxieties about nuclear war and that was directed like an austere black-and-white newsreel; the movie is very bleak and, also, rather disorienting in that the version of the film released in American theaters features interpolated footage starring Raymond Burr as a melancholy reporter interacting with body-doubles of the Japanese actors in Honda's original cut that was dismantled, poorly dubbed, and re-edited for drive-in movie theaters in this country.  This first picture in a series of movies that became cheaper and more campy with each year (and targeted to increasingly young audiences -- several of the pictures in the series are so goofy that they seem made for toddlers) was gruesome, serious, an anti-war movie for adults darkened by the mushroom clouds at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Godzilla -- Minus One returns to the roots of the franchise and is an effort to recapture the original gravitas of the concept:  that is, a giant fire-breathing dragon who embodies the spirit of war and mayhem stalks the Japanese islands and wreaks havoc on a population already horribly traumatized by past combat and air raids.  The movie is effective and, certainly, serious enough, indeed, almost to a fault.  I like movies of this sort and heartily recommend the picture to Godzilla fans.  However, if you aren't an admirer of the huge radioactive fire-lizard. you should pass on this movie -- it's good, but not good enough to stand on its own merits.  There's nothing particularly new or interesting in the film although it is very well-made and convincing.  However, it's neither witty nor profound enough to transcend its genre.  

A kamakazi pilot, Shikashima lands his bomb-laden jet on a remote island in the Pacific.  Shikashima is angry and depressed and it's apparent that his claim that his jet is mechanically defective is feigned.  Simply put, Shikashima had decided that he's not willing to die for Japan in a war that is obviously lost.  Tachibana, the head jet mechanic on the island confronts Shikashima about the failure of his mission but, in fact, endorses his decision to not sacrifice his life in vain.  That night, Godzilla arises from the waters near the atoll, attacks the air base, and begins squashing all the troops there with his huge scaly feet.  Shikashima climbs into his plane to shoot the beast with the craft's machine gun but is terrified and freezes, unable to pull the trigger.  The monster kills everyone but Tachibana and when Shikashima wakes up the next morning, there's long row of corpses lined up on the beach.  Tachibana denounces Shikashima rather operatically declaiming that the men might have been spared if the kamakazi pilot had been able to fire the guns on his jet -- not a realistic scenario as we shall soon see.  The morose and masochistic Shikashima, spared death on the island, gathers up the dead men's photographs showing their wives and families and carries these picture about as a macabre souvenir of the encounter.

The defeated Japanese troops are transported freezing on a sort of barge back to Japan.  Shikashima finds that Tokyo has been completely destroyed in bombing raids in which his parents were killed,  Shikashima's sister reports these casualties to the hero, rather bizarrely claiming that if he had performed his kamakazi mission their parents would have survived the war.  (This is programmatic in this picture; Shikashima is continuously getting blamed for misfortunes that are not his fault.)  In the rubble, Shikashima finds a girl holding a baby girl, Akiko, and forms an impromptu family with the woman and child.  His sister is also recruited to help care for the infant.  Shikashima is suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, has terrible nightmares, and survivor's guilt -- he wishes he had died in the War which, as he says, hasn't yet ended for him.  A few years pass.  The baby becomes a toddler.  The young woman obviously loves Shikashima and hopes that he will marry her.  But he hesitates, recognizing that his mental health is fragile and that he remains embittered, lonely, and anguished due to his war experiences.  As if in an attempt to commit suicide, Shikashima works clearing mines from the ocean near Japan, well-paid but very dangerous work.  On the job, he becomes friends with a scientist, Kenji Noda, and a couple other men.  These men encourage him to marry the young woman (her name is Noriko) but the morose Shikashima demures.  Godzilla, now radioactive due to exposure to the Bikini Atoll nuclear test, surfaces again, wrecks an American destroyer, chases the minesweeper in the best action sequence in the movie, and, then, comes ashore in Giza.  In a scene of spectacular destruction, Godzilla wrecks half of Tokyo and unleashes his violet blue "heat ray", a beam of light that shatters everything that it touches -- in this assault, Noriko is swept into the flames by Gozilla's radioactive blast.  Godzilla retreats into the sea and the Japanese citizenry (they are not allowed to have an army due to the ongoing occupation) strategize as to how to eliminate the giant monster.  The scientist Kenji Noda and his buddies on the minesweeper are instrumental in developing this plan.  The Americans are of no assistance:  with General MacArthur they are engaged in some sort of struggle with the Soviets which diverts their attention from rampaging sea monster.  Members of the defunct Japanese navy assemble for a last mission at sea, an attack on Godzilla that is postured as redemption with respect to their defeat and war crimes.  Shikashima agrees to fly a reconstructed war-time jet to reconnoiter the sea; the jet is laden with bombs so that he can fly the plane into Godzilla's mouth and blow him up from inside -- it is kamakazi mission but this time, with a purpose. (Shikashima has sought out the jet mechanic, Tachibana, to renovate the plane.)  There's a big battle with the monster at sea and, then, on land where Godzilla waddles round the lush hills and valleys wrecking rice paddies.  An armada of Japanese tug boats gathers in the harbor to assist the survivors of Japan's wartime naval campaigns and, after some impressive sequences, Godzilla is mangled and sinks into a deep trench off the coast of Japan.  In the final scene, shot underwater, we see the mutilated monster reconstituting himself and rising to the surface, presumably for another bout of fiery destruction in Tokyo and environs.

The movie is shot in faded dull colors.  The film has a peculiar yellowish cast as if photographed on Hitler-era Agfacolor, the German color process used in World War Two.  Images are dim, intentionally underlit, and the characters are often shot in brownish shadow.  Except for the action sequences, the picture uses long takes, eschews close-ups, and adopts a greyish-brown color palette.  The sequences with the giant monster are well done, and the director is not afraid in some scenes to use the cheesy, obviously fake special effects that make the series endearing  -- other scenes are state-of-the-art spectacular.  (When the monster is about to unleash his deadly heat ray the forest of stalagmites on his back and head pop out of his spine glowing in a purple-violet light and the death ray is a beam of brilliant neon violet.  In the final scenes, the monster, severely wounded sinks into the dark green ocean depths, spikes of violet like searchlights piercing the gloom; overhead the sun breaks through the clouds and we see beams of yellow light probing at the sea.)  The movie has a stirring musical theme.  It's overacted in the best Japanese style with characters sobbing hysterically, shrieking as they beat one another up, and bellowing in inchoate rage.  Scenes showing the rubble in Tokyo are realistically shot and have a grim authenticity.  The movie is mostly well-written and, certainly, would have powerful resonance with a Japanese audience -- the film's overt theme is overcoming the nation's shame and humiliation associated with its defeat in World War Two by a valorous battle with the monstrous radioactive dragon.  A few scenes make no sense.  The tugboat armada that comes to the aid of the scientist's fleet attempting to sink Godzilla is weirdly ineffectual -- it's a stirring reference to the "miracle of Dunkirk" but what it's doing in this movie is unclear to me.  I enjoyed the movie from beginning to end although I was slightly dismayed at some of the jingoistic and martial themes in the picture -- it's rather bizarre to promote the notion that Japan can atone for the World War by defeating a monstrous sea beast.  I understand that the film was made on a low-budget.  This is never apparent from the impressive imagery on display in the signature scenes in which Godzilla munches on a destroyer or rages through a flaming city.  This 2023 picture, the number one movie in Japan for a number of weeks, is not dubbed (mercifully) and presented with subtitles -- it was directed by Takashi Yamazaki.  (There's no doubt that a sequel is now in the works.)