GODZILLA MINUS ONE is Cinema At Its Most Monumental, Moving, and Monstrously Magnificent
A review of Takashi Yamazaki’s triumphant rejuvenation of the Godzilla franchise.
“To have never gone to war is something to be proud of.”
How many times have you heard the same old complaints about kaiju movies in general, and Godzilla movies in particular? You know, the recurring grievances about how there’s too little of the title monster in the story, and there’s too much focus on the human characters, and the human drama is never interesting enough to take priority over the spectacle of ginormous monsters demolishing cities and beating up other monsters.
I’ve seen it be said for Cloverfield, and Pacific Rim, and naturally, both of the American remakes of Godzilla, plus every subsequent MonsterVerse movie for whom the 2014 Godzilla was the progenitor (i.e. Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs Kong, and I have no doubt Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire will continue the tradition unabated). Strangely, perhaps Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal is one of the rare exceptions that proves the rule, even though I know it’s not exactly a traditional kaiju movie at all.
But having now seen the original 1954 Godzilla, then 2016’s Shin Godzilla, and now the universally acclaimed Godzilla Minus One, I’ve gotta say… maybe it’s a skill issue on America’s part, that they seemingly have so much trouble cracking the code on consistently crafting compelling human character drama in kaiju movies to match the larger-than-life blockbuster destruction informing said characters’ actions. Especially with regards to Godzilla Minus One, which is hands-down one of the all-time best monster movies I have ever had the pleasure of seeing, because the human drama is easily as thrilling and captivating as the monster mayhem surrounding it.
Ryunosuke Kamiki’s protagonist, Kōichi Shikishima, is a boundlessly sympathetic figure for us to care about. As a person wracked with intense guilt and trauma over the acts of cowardice he and others perceive him to have unforgivably committed during wartime, Shikishima reminds me of Harry Faversham, the main character of The Four Feathers. Now, while I haven’t read the source novel, and the only cinematic adaptation I’ve seen of it was Shekhar Kapur’s 2002 version starring Heath Ledger, the intense reaction I felt to the emotional plight these protagonists share is what links the two in my mind.
In The Four Feathers, Haversham has his life torn asunder by the supposed friends and family around him accusing him of cowardice, with even his fiancé shunning him, all because he resigned from going to fight in a war he was (reasonably) afraid he would die in. This always rubbed me the wrong way, the manner in which choosing safety and choosing life, instead of fighting in a meaningless war to die a meaningless death, was perceived by the people around him as a mark of unheroic shame to cruelly pillory him for, questioning his national pride, his masculinity, and his worthiness to exist in their social circles. So while the entire point of the story is about Haversham’s journey to regain his honour, renounce his cowardice, and return a hero to show up those who doubted him and cast him out, I always felt like it was unjust for him to have ever felt like he needed to do such a thing in the first place. Not in a way where I think the author was doing something wrong in the story’s telling, but rather that I hated the very circumstances and societal attitudes that made Haversham’s journey of redemption feel necessary for him whatsoever. His soul wasn’t the one that needed to be redeemed. It was his nation’s.
Similarly, Shikishima in Godzilla Minus One is unfairly made to feel the weight of the world on his shoulders, to brutally bear the brunt of so many people’s deaths, because he didn’t fulfil the ultimate suicidal goal of the kamikaze pilot, an inhuman duty imposed upon him and countless others during the dying days of World War II. His only crimes were being overwhelmed by understandable fear in the face of wartime horrors, and simply not wanting to die. But after the events of the film’s prologue, and the subsequent reactions from those who know of his failures upon his return to what remains of his home, the regrets Shikishima is burdened by haunt his every waking and dreaming moment thereafter. That the devastation and chaos of the war’s aftermath should thrust him into the orbit of a young woman, homeless and struggling to fend for both herself and the baby girl she’s come to adopt from the child’s deceased parents, and that life should swirl these three together into a found family unit to cling to as their community literally rebuilds itself, is a blessing and a curse for the man left to believe he is unworthy of living, yet forced to help nurture a life, and to continue onwards through the pain of his mortal shame. But it is not his soul that needs to be redeemed. It’s his nation’s.
And over the course of the film’s story, Shikishima won’t be the only one fighting for Japan’s post-war soul.
All this… in a Godzilla movie! One that’s so good, the fact that the eponymous kaiju only has around 9 minutes of screen-time isn’t an issue in the slightest, for his sparing visual presence is more than made up for by the looming dread and unpredictable threat of waiting for his arrival, and the ensuing insurmountable battle for survival his towering beastliness presents to this war-torn land. But once Gojira comes out to play, the sense of scale and nail-bitingly perilous adventure in those sequences is exhilarating. When on sea, with that tiny wooden boat fighting against a colossal teeth-baring animal, it feels like Jaws, and when on land, staring up in horrified awe at this impossibly huge monster reducing buildings to rubble in mere seconds, I felt transported back to the feeling of when I went to see War of the Worlds twice at the cinema, because of that monumental experience of being dwarfed into insignificance by gigantic beings to whom humans are nothing but ants scrabbling underfoot.
By now, you’ll likely have heard the comparisons made between Oppenheimer and Godzilla Minus One, and how the latter acts as an unusual yet fitting companion piece to the former. But what I would also add to that is the highly comparable themes and visuals Godzilla Minus One shares with another World-War-Two-set Christopher Nolan film: Dunkirk.
After all, both contain characters facing guilty feelings of cowardice over wanting to escape and live through the war; both have deeply humanist, anti-war messages of prioritising survival and living over losing and dying against an enemy too big to yet defeat; both have triumphant moments of vast numbers of ordinary people in boats coming together to provide soldiers with vital aid in their darkest hour of need; hell, even Naoki Satō’s spine-tinglingly atmospheric score has more than a shade of Hans Zimmer’s Dunkirk soundtrack in there at times, whenever it isn’t reincorporating Akira Ifukube’s original iconic Godzilla themes, that is.
My god(zilla), Minus One is just so phenomenal. Truly the kind of movie whose quality rekindles your memory of the joy you felt when you first fell in love with this majestic medium to begin with. It’s an emotional rollercoaster of crushing lows and dizzying highs that leaves you breathless, satisfied, and ready to go again for one more spin.
GOJIRA FOREVER!
