Godzilla Minus One – Snapshot
Of course, Godzilla Minus One, is a sci-fi monster story and the CGI effects to create him are terrific. But it is also a tear-jerking human story that is at once very personal and a reflection on Japanese national character. Is it also a warning? (4*)
Where to Watch:
Stream: Netflix
Rent: Apple/Prime/Fandango/Google ($4)
(Because I dislike dubbing, I recommend viewing the Japanese language version with subtitles. Although the subtitles aren’t the best!)
Godzilla Minus One – The Oscar Buzz
Oscar Nominations (1) / Oscar Wins (1) :
Visual Effects WINNER
Godzilla Minus One is the amazing work of another Japanese creative, Takashi Yamazaki, head of Toho Studios. Yamazaki and Miyazaki, head of the animation filmmakers, Studio Ghibli – source of last week’s Animated Feature Oscar Winner The Boy and the Heron – are known to be friends. As with Studio Ghibli, Toho Studio has turned out a number of movies for Japan and I’ve listed several of them in the next section. The studio does almost everything in-house, and the team, although fairly small, has worked together for many movies over the years.
Yamazaki was not only the director and writer, but he also mastered most of the special effects. And he was one of four people honored with the Oscar out of a team of only 48 people credited for visual effects. One of the honorees was a young man, now just 26 years old, who, on his own time, developed extremely realistic computer-generated-imagery that created near-perfect water effects. The director was so taken with his efforts that he modified the script to include more water-based scenes, including the exciting climax.
Since this is the first in our Visual Effects festival, I can’t say whether the movie deserved the Oscar. But the movie includes an amazing 610 CGI shots, each of which took days to generate on the computer network, accounting for large parts of the 5 year production schedule and the production budget of $15 Million. (While that is a piddly amount for an American CGI-laden film, Godzilla Minus One is reportedly the most expensive film ever made in Japan and is the third highest grossing movie in Japanese history. Obviously, the Japanese are much more efficient in their use of CGI than we are!) As far as I can tell, this year’s win is the only Oscar nomination the studio has ever received.
A quick note about the soundtrack. Scored by longtime Toho collaborator, Naomi Sato, the score is perfect accompaniment to not just the monster sequences, but also personal and national dramas. With titles like “Hope”, “Pain”, and “Pride”, each track was written to reflect distinct emotions and they are then used in the movie exactly where appropriate. The movie won the Visual Effects Oscar, but probably should have also been nominated for Score!
Godzilla Minus One – Related Movies
The Great War of Archimedes/The Fighter Pilot (13)/Always: Sunset on Third Street (05/07/12)/Parasyte: Part 1/2 (Direction, Script, Cinematography, Film Editing, Musical Score, Production Design, Costumes)
Godzilla (54)/Shin Godzilla (16)(Important predecessors)
Godzilla Minus One – What Others Think
The viewing public may not have liked last week’s Japanese film, The Boy and the Heron, all that much, but they certainly raved about this one. Audience ratings put this film at number one out of all 24 general interest movies, with one of my rating scales based on more than 155K ratings. Viewer comments include “now this is more like it.”; “Awesome movie”, “A masterpiece retelling of a classic”, and “Heavy on the Human Element”. (More on the human element in the final section!)
Usually, when the viewing public really likes a popular film, especially one laden with visual effects, the critics run in the opposite direction. But surprisingly, critics ranked Godzilla Minus One sixth out of the 24 general interest movies tied with one of my favorites from this year, Poor Things. MaryAnn Johanson (FlickFilosopher), a longtime fan of sci-fi films, notes “This latest is maybe the closest to the sincere, unironic horrors of the 1954 film than we’ve seen since.” And, maybe more appropriate now than when she wrote “If you’re hoping that this new monster movie might offer some escape from terrible reality, you’re probably not going to find any such comfort here.” Kim Newman (Sight&Sound) summarized that the movie “…(seesawed) from tear-jerking, self-sacrifice to heroic survival, all the while treating its star with the respect due a seventy-year-old icon.” Of Yamazaki, Simon Abrams (RogerEbert) wrote “…he made a good Godzilla movie, if not a great one.” Steven Spielberg reportedly saw this movie three times and considers it a masterpiece.
Combining both critical and audience rating scales, Godzilla Minus One came in number one of all 24 general interest movies, tied with Oppenheimer. If you add in the Special Interest films, only the animated feature Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol were ranked higher. Clearly this is a must see movie – everyone thinks so.
Godzilla Minus One – Special Mention
Godzilla and Japanese Culture – The first Godzilla movie came out in 1954 and was a success both in Japan and in other countries, although perhaps for different reasons. To many, if not most, American viewers the Godzilla movies represent mostly a typical science fiction story about a monster that happens to be a dinosaur super-sized by nuclear radiation.
For Japan, though, the Godzilla symbolism seems to register much higher for what it tells us about Japanese culture. No country can possibly enjoy being defeated in a major war, but for Japan, it wasn’t just the humiliation of losing a battle after posturing so righteously. Japan remains to this day – and that could change at any moment – the only country to suffer the horrors of a nuclear bomb. Japan was, at that point, at least losing the war, if not already defeated. But the U.S., in a very controversial move, decided to make one, no make that two, final statements claiming out and out victory, military superiority, and an important warning to Japan and anyone else who might challenge our country. (See Oppenheimer!) In instants, more than 200,000 people perished in the nuclear holocausts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and untold thousands after that of nuclear radiation, starvation, and dislocation. Not to mention the ongoing unhappiness and anxiety produced by the social disruptions of defeat, loss and horror.
It took nine years, but two Japanese creatives figured out a way to express all the horror, anxiety, and despair that the war had caused. The war, or was it their enemies, could be personified by a monster of awesome capabilities and one that wreaked utter havoc on Japanese society. In 1954, Toho Studios produced the original Godzilla movie, released 70 years ago, although at the earlier time, the studio was headed by Ishiro Honda and Takeo Murata. That original movie took deliberate efforts to portray the pain of Japan’s post-war experience. Most Godzilla lovers believe that no film equals the combination of a sci-fi monster experience with a touching portrayal of a culture deeply damaged that was embodied in that movie. Since then, Toho Studios has released 32 more movies portraying Godzilla (and American studios have added five more), culminating in the 2016 Shin Godzilla and then with this film, Godzilla Minus One. That makes Gojira (in Japanese) the longest running and most prolific movie franchise character in cinema history, with 38 movies spanning over 70 years. (The Americans have released the latest this year, but I haven’t seen it as it hasn’t been nominated for an Oscar, yet!)
One of the important themes I’ve seen in discussions of Godzilla Minus One is that it comes so much closer to the original Godzilla in reflecting the political and social undertones relevant to Japan. I’m not going to get into a discussion of why that kind of reflection might be surfacing now, but the nuclear disaster clock is ticking closer to midnight than at any recent times. And Japan has been struck by two very serious disasters, the tidal wave, and the Fukushima power plant meltdown, which is directly relevant to Godzilla’s origin.
Finally, I don’t pretend to fully understand Japanese Shinto religious beliefs or feelings. But I find it instructive that many Japanese don’t just see Godzilla as a monster, but also as a sort of god! You should note that, at least in any of the Japanese Godzilla movies, the monster never consumes his prey; kills them, yes, massively – but he is not a predator. Godzilla represents almost a mechanism for self-flagellation. Through Godzilla, Japan is, in part, atoning for its sins and also expressing in stark, ugly terms, its immense amount of loss sustained because of nuclear bombs. It is no accident that Godzilla’s “secret weapon” is how he can produce the effects of an atomic bomb from his body and project them through his breath. Gods change as history demands it, and so, in many ways, Godzilla should be viewed as one of Japan’s gods!
Godzilla Minus One – Michael’s Moments
Godzilla Minus One is the latest in a Japanese string of Godzilla movies as I have recounted in the previous section. It occupies an important space in that history as it, more effectively than most of its predecessors, managed to reflect the spirt of the original 1954 Godzilla movie portraying the Japanese in a time of acute crisis. There are three ways to look at this movie and they are all important to enjoying it.
First, and foremost, it is a “monster” movie. And Godzilla is one of the best. Even though it only occupies about 16 minutes of screen time, this Godzilla is technically and behaviorally at the top of the game. With the most intense, and expensive, application of CGI technology yet, Godzilla is rendered in amazing detail and when it charges up to deliver one of its “death blows” it is almost charming in its technical perfection. Probably, though, the reason this movie won the Visual Effects Oscar is in the sweeping destruction of the Ginja district of Tokyo in the middle of the movie. The CGI integration of monster, people, buildings, and destruction is definitely on a par with, if not better, than what we saw in Tenet, or the California earthquake movies. (As I said earlier, I don’t know if this deserves the Oscar, because I haven’t seen the other four, but it definitely deserved the nomination).
What makes this movie better than your usual “monster” flick, is the human story. Our main character, Shikishima, is a kamikaze pilot who manages to survive the war. Now, if you think about that for a while – a kamikaze pilot who survives – you have set up some pretty intense psychological issues; kamikazes who do their job don’t come back. But he somehow manages with all the baggage that imparts. In a circumstantial crunch, he becomes a surrogate father and provider for an orphan infant and the woman who “adopts” the baby. And the stage is set. In a series of improbable events – but, hey, this is a monster movie so why not – Shikishima becomes a central figure in a desperate battle to save Japan from monstrous destruction – and, in many ways, a chance to atone for his sin of surviving. The dynamics between the family members, sometimes even with the baby, are moving and fun to watch. And, I think, it is this family thread through the movie that balances the monster excitement with dramatic, even tearful, human story making. This is, for me, the element of Godzilla Minus One that makes the film worth watching.
There is a third element of the film that connects these two other elements and provides the primary reason why many critics loved this film. And that is the keen portrayal of Japanese national character. Godzilla Minus One is a “period” piece movie, in that it is actually set in 1940s Japan with period-appropriate clothing, cars, and buildings. Most of the other Godzilla movies have portrayed the monster in relatively modern times, presumably to give him a more threatening currency. But director, writer, and visual effects master Takashi Yamazaki wants to explore the effect that the war had on a devastated national character. The name “Minus One” derives from the fact that many referred to the rebuilding of Japan post-war as starting from scratch and so Japan was returned to version 1.0. Godzilla’s carnage sets back Japan even further, into negative territory.
No-one in this effort is at all trying to forgive Japan for its war-crimes. Even the idea of suicide missions has always been considered an excessive war tactic. And there is a scene in the film where the team rising up to defeat Godzilla, without effective government or superpower (U.S.) support, decries the inhumanity of their wartime government. But it is also an incontrovertible fact that Japan is the only country on this planet, so far at least, that has, in two blinding incidents, lost more than 200,000 of its inhabitants. Although it can, and has, been argued that Japan was nearly ready to surrender anyway, the U.S. unloaded two atomic bombs directly over small cities, obliterating, instantly most of their inhabitants. What does that do to the people who survived? How do they move on? How do they get up in the morning when faced with such a horrifying experience?
Godzilla Minus One takes a national experience and distills it into a personal battle. It doesn’t, and can’t answer all questions. But for a couple of hours you gain an understanding of a nation by feeling the pains, and successes, of one of its citizens. As in all Godzilla movies, there are always the seeds planted for a return. (And, in her last appearance in the movie, what is that thing on Noriko’s neck?). As the world nuclear clock ticks even closer to midnight, can Godzilla actually make a comeback?
Roaring good monster-fun and a tear-jerker. (4*)
