This article is spoiler free! Enjoy!
“To all of our viewers, this is not a play or a movie. This is real, the most extraordinary story of the century! Is the world going to be destroyed by a 2 million old monster?”
-Godzilla (Honda, 1954)
As Godzilla cleaves his way through the city, leaving behind total horror and devastation, a group of broadcasters with their early 20th Century cameras stand atop a broadcasting tower. Even as the monster lumbers towards them, they continue to live broadcast what they are seeing - even in the final seconds as the mighty jaws of Godzilla clamp down on the metal tower. A reporter describes the scene, and the subtitles tell us “We don’t know what will become of us. He is getting even closer! It looks like our doom! […] Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye.” before the tower is ripped apart and the reporters crash to their presumed deaths.
The scene I have just described was first seen in 1954’s original Godzilla and it resurfaces again in Takashi Yamazaki’s 2023 Godzilla Minus One. It is just one of the many ways that Minus One gives us a return to form and reminds us of what the original incarnation of Kaiju’s most iconic creature was all about. Nearly seventy years down the line from Honda’s original masterpiece, we’ve seen Godzilla be the doomsday bringer, earth’s protector and even proud father as he teams up and takes down various – and more recently Americanized - incarnations of Mothra, Mechagodzilla, Ghidorah and even King Kong across the decades. Minus One is not only a return to a long-awaited cinematic tradition for the King of Monsters but also a well-received return to Japan and Japanese talent, both in front of and behind the camera, for this perseverant franchise.
Set in post-WWII Japan, we follow kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima who’s life becomes haunted by the reawakened prehistoric creature. When he fails to shoot Godzilla in an attack at a Japanese mechanics base on Odo Island, Shikishima carries not only the memory of a devastating war that has completely devastated his home city but also being one of only two survivors of the unpublicized slaughter at Odo Island. While trying to get by in the aftermath, he takes in a young woman, Noriko Ōishi, and the orphaned baby that she is caring for in one of the most touching displays of found family that I’ve personally felt resonate on the cinema screen. The film is a powerful depiction of survivor’s guilt as well as the oppressive effect of war on domestic life in a community trying to recover from utter destruction.
As my brief plot summery conveys, Yamazaki understands that the original vision of Godzilla was never just about a titanic, near-indestructible lizard that wrecks everything in his path, but a monstrous embodiment of the obliterating effects of war and all its traumas. While Godzilla’s presence in Shikishima’s story is crucial to its meaning, the core of the movie is in its cast of characters that touch upon many of the experiences of trying to pick up oneself after one of the most destructive events in our history. Minus One reminds us that we should never get comfortable with what little distance we may feel from wartimes. In an age where the conversation of nuclear weaponry is only ever-growing in our global consciousness, Minus One exhibits the domestic lives of the common people who bear the weight of war on their mental health in the day-to-day.
Lives that I feel should always be held in as high regard (if not more) than those at the top of the chain. When I declared on Letterboxd that “this was my Oppenheimer”, I meant that in the most serious of terms. The story of the men and women who didn’t start a war but are forced to live it and then pick themselves up after everything is taken from them and a slightly-uncanny looking dinosaur with an atomic death ray for breath will always be the superior carrier of meaning for me.
Minus One is rife with incredible talent. One many will commemorate is the phenomenal work of Naoki Sato in returning and re-chilling Akira Ifukube’s original theme to the big screen. The exceptional performance by the lead Ryunosuke Kamiki as Shikishima can equally never go unmentioned. Without the perfect delivery of Kamiki’s performance to hit home this exploration of survivor’s guilt as the oppressive monster that clung to many post-war frontlines, the film’s depth would be
stunted. I personally want to call out the performances of Sakura Ando as Sumiko Ota - Shikishima’s
neighbour who lost both her children to the Tokyo bombings and acts as both an enforcer of Shikishima’s guilt and a third-party maternal figure that the stitched-together family finds much-needed support in - and Munetaka Aoki as Sosaku Tachibana who’s lesser screen-time (compared to the majority of the main cast) at
no point denies his integrity to Shikishima’s journey. Ando has in fact been nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the 47th Japan Academy Film Prize, as well as Best Actor and Actress for Ryunosuke Kamiki and Minami Hamabe (Noriko) respectively. That being said, all of the performances are outstanding and serve as the crucial drive for the film’s terrific storytelling.
When it comes to technical creative feats, my personal vocabulary can unfortunately fall short. However, if the award nominations are anything to go by, they are certainly something to write home about. As of now, Minus One is the first Godzilla to receive a nomination for an Oscar for its visual effects and it has the leading number of nominations for the 47th Japan Academy Film Prize. It’s up for twelve nominations across lighting, art, sound, cinematography and editing as well as Best Film and Director. I was certainly on the edge of my seat during the destruction scenes that never swayed too far into the inconceivable and the impassioned craftmanship of the film is inarguable. While the ocean-faring scenes are certainly a standout, for me the most captivating environments were the images of a completely obliterated neighbourhood that is trying to pick itself up in the aftermath. As time progresses in the plot (made clear by baby Akiko growing into a toddler across the course of events), we see businesses re-establish themselves amongst the rubble of Tokyo such as the one-table bar & restaurant that we frequently see the main friend group have conversations over, made from wood and a single short counter. The omnipresence of the recent devastation is present with numerous piles of rubble and thick grey ash covering the neighbourhood that is physically unable to be rebuilt and revitalized even after a year or two.
I wanted to re-watch Godzilla Minus One before writing this review after only seeing it once at the BFI IMAX in London Southbank, an experience I will proudly hold for as long as I remember it. Unfortunately, like most things, I was a late to the party and now none of my local cinemas are showing it anymore. So for now, I wait impatiently for the day I can buy it on DVD and thus make a final call on whether a) my glowing response is in some part supported by the heightened effects of an IMAX screen and b) if my verdict that I’ve been feverishly telling to anyone who will listen is true: that even though it’s literally only January, I may already have found my stand-out cinema experience of the year.
All images taken from the above trailer | Word count: 1247
コメント