GODZILLA MINUS ONE ***** Japan / USA 2023 Dir: Takashi Yamazaki. 125 mins
The last Godzilla films I saw in a theatre were Godzilla Vs. the Thing (1964) with King Kong Vs. Godzilla (1962), not the CGI remake. I stuffed myself with popcorn with enough salt for a month and actual butter along with some watered-down lemonade and loved it. I had no idea what I was watching but it was fun, and stuff got wrecked by giant monsters. Fast forward to a much older, perhaps not wiser modern theatre and the magnificent new Godzilla Minus One (2023) showing on the big and may say loud screen and sound system.
Godzilla is back as if he ever really left with momentary diversions into ecological themes in the later Japanese film to become a hero fighting for the Earth. This film begins with the original Toho Studios logo which is pretty cool breaking into the later days of the Second World War on a remote island outpost. Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a Kamikaze pilot who lands back at the base due to a flight problem. Koichi is resting when he notices large deep-sea fish floating to the surface. Suddenly the base is attacked by Godzilla rising from the ocean, Koichi is ordered to get to his aircraft and use his guns on the rampaging beast. He aims at Godzilla but can’t bring himself to shoot resulting in the mechanics and military men being destroyed quite graphically. Koichi wakes up to find the dead bodies and suffering from survivor’s guilt. This is the central theme of the film and one that plays an important part in the ending.
Koichi returns home finding the beast has destroyed his village and his parents plus more scorn from the villagers for ‘returning’ and not doing his job to stop the destruction. In the village his shunned life changes when Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe) and a baby Akiko (Sae Nagatani), live with him as they are also outcasts. He takes a risky job blowing up sea mines on a wooden boat where he meets Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), an ex-weapons engineer, and Sosaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), an ex-Navy mechanic, along with several other ex-military people. The crew banter about even make fun of each other, till it runs serious with a telling remark that is good not to go to war when one boasts that they have.
This anti-war theme is paying homage to the original Gojira (1954) of which this film is a new version. Gojira (1954) was more paranoid as the scientists seemed reluctant to team together for the solution. In this film, it’s a camaraderie of the military without government help. The beauty of this film is the human story that is attached to Godzilla. You can be sure there are plenty of those particularity at sea with wreck ships, and a rampaging Godzilla glaring out from under the water as it rises to pop forth its radioactive back fins before unleashing the heat blast.
The ending is a stunner, and I can only say that it is the only time I have been in a theatre with people watching a Giant monster film and had total silence during a sequence. Not a mutter a cough, a munch of popcorn just the void as the story unfolded. Perhaps I was lucky to have a good audience.
The actors are all wonderful in their roles some get more time than others to show dimensions. What struck me was Minami Hamabe in the role of Noriko had a resemblance to Setsuko Hara, one of the great Japanese women actors of the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema. Hara had a radiant, compassionate presence making the living symbol of the changing role of women in Japanese society. Beginning her career at age fifteen, she appeared in more than one hundred films, including works by Akira Kurosawa.
Miou Tanaka who plays the role of Tatsuo Hotta, Captain of Yukikaze brings to mind Sessue Hayakawa in The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957). Tanaka had the look, the gruffness in the voice and was an authority figure. Hayakawa had a long and distinguished career but fell out of favour due to post-war prejudices in society.
Godzilla Minus One (2023) is not your Warner Brothers nor the ghastly stomp fests that pass for ‘MonsterVerse’ although it was fun to see the three-headed Ghidorah again. The closest impact in a Warner Brothers film would be the moment in Godzilla (1998) when Matthew Broderick’s character watched Godzilla’s face as the monster breathed his last. That moment when the eye turns lifeless is priceless in Giant monster films like the humanity in Godzilla Minus One (2023). It is similar in scope to the Japanese-produced Shin Godzilla (2016), this film stands on its own. A Japanese-made film with subtitles with a human story of guilt, redemption, and rising from failure not only for the people in the film but the Spirit of a Country. I didn’t have lemonade this time, it was iced tea.
Review by Terry Sherwood