Film Review: Godzilla Minus One

 

Sexuality/Nudity No Objection

Violence Mature

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy No Objection

I am not a Godzilla devotee.  

There are people (some of them very good friends of mine) who are completely invested in the world of Godzilla.  He is not just another movie monster.  He is his own genre.  And within that genre there are even more sub-genres.  There are intricacies and nuances that true fans will know.

Again, I am not one of those.

When it comes to Godzilla, I am a normie.

I have appreciated some of the films, but many are not my cup of tea.  So this review stands as someone who is outside of that Godzilla subculture.

And I have to say that Godzilla Minus One is the best Godzilla movie I have ever seen.  Not only that, it is one of the best films of 2023.

The movie begins at the tail end of World War II.  Kamikaze pilot Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), lands on an island air base claiming he is having engine trouble.  But Sosaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), the main mechanic can see that his plane is fine and that Shikishima was too scared to die in battle.  Before anything can be done, a monster the size of a T-Rex attacks and kills most of the people at the airbase.  When the war ends, Shikishima returns to a devastated Tokyo.  The fact that he survived is a source of shame to his neighbors like Sumiko (Sakura Ando), who cannot stand that Shikishima is alive while her family died.  By chance, Shikishima encounters a young thief named Noriko (Minabi Hamabe) who is caring for a baby orphan Akiko.  Together, the three of them eek out a living in a shanty: all that remains of Shikishima's home.  As the years go on, Shikishima gets a job from the government to destroy mines.  He joins a crew led by surly Captain Yoji Akitsu (Kuranosuke Sasaki), brainy Kenji "Doc" Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), and impulsive Shiro "Kid" Mizushima (Yuki Yamada).  Together they form a tight friendship.  Meanwhile Shikishima, Noriko, and Akiko grow into a strange family, but Shikishima refuses to take the title father or to admit any romantic feels for Noriko even as he takes all of the responsibilities of a husband and father.  But then, Godzilla appears and breaks into the lives of everyone in Japan, especially our heroes.

If you noticed from my plot description, there are a lot of details about the lives of the human characters and not a lot about Godzilla.  That is because this is the first Godzilla movie I have ever seen where I cared more about the human characters than the main monster.  In fact, I would watch an entire movie about the struggles of these characters in post-war Japan even without Godzilla being in it.  These characters are relatable, vivid, and distinct.  Each one has their own unique look and voice and takes up a special place in the narrative.  Everyone has depth and dimension.  For example, when Sumiko is introduced, I thought she would simply be a shrill voice of antagonism.  But when she sees Shikishima caring for Akiko, Sumiko displays some human depth while maintaining the integrity of her anger.

That isn't to say that Godzilla is superfluous to the plot.  Like the shark in Jaws, he is the one that pushes the narrative forward and is the vehicle for the characters to act and grow.  And like Jaws, the presence of interesting and layered characters only enhances the scary scenes because you actually care deeply about their fates.

Another reason why this Godzilla film works so well is that the monster brings out the rich themes of the story.  The destruction of Japan, particularly the atomic destruction, lingers in the culture.  Godzilla represents the horror and devastation that the war brought to them.  And this also gives the characters an opportunity to confront their demons from that war.  This is especially true with Shikishima.  Throughout the film he refuses to let himself be happy because of his horrible survivor's guilt.  This is a guilt born not just of the violence, but because he failed to die for his country out of his own perceived cowardice.  Facing Godzilla is facing his fear.  Characters like "Doc" face Godzilla as an opportunity to use their ingenuity to save their country in a way they couldn't before the war.  Even the "Kid" hopes to enter into the danger because he was to young to fight before.

Writer/Director Takashi Yamazaki has done such a fantastic job of marrying plot, theme, character, and spectacle.  The movie is beautiful to watch.  He lets you feel the devastation of Tokyo after the war and encounter its struggle to rebuild.  When we see the progress the people make, it makes Godzilla rampage all the more devastating.  And Godzilla is more terrifying in this movie than I have ever seen him.  My comparison to Jaws earlier is apt.  I could not help think of the crew of the Orca while the monster swam after them.  There is one shot in particular where Godzilla stares at the men on the boat that filled me with absolute dread.  The movie is purported to have only a $15 million budget.  While there a few places where you can feel the visual corner-cutting, the movie looks easily like any other Hollywood blockbuster costing 10 times as much.  Yamazaki knows that if you can get your audience to invest emotionally, the visual effects will work even better.  And I have to say, this is the best example of Godzilla's atomic breath I have ever seen.

The performances are also excellent all around.  As I said, everyone comes across as being more than a simple stereotype.  There is a heightened emotionality that is a little jarring to me as an American.  But once I adjusted to this type of acting, it helped underscore the characters.  Kamiki and Hamabi are fantastic in their chemistry and all of the unspoken feelings bubling under the surface.  Yoshioka was one of my favorites as he made me feel a genuine warmth and good-will.  The biggest surprise for me was Aoki.  His rage and his disgust for Shikishima radiates off of the screen in a way that you almost see the story from his point of view instead of our main hero.

One of things that took me aback about this movie is that it is incredibly Pro-Life.  The fact that Shikishima is a kamikaze is not incidental.  It is an indictment of the entire wartime Japanese culture that treated human life so carelessly.  "Doc" has a wonderful speech in the third act where he catalogues all of the ways in which human lives were considered an expendable commodity in favor of some other objective.  The cheapening of human life corroded the soul of the people.  Godzilla is a manifestation of that destructive ideology.  But the movie is clear that every single human life matters.  To die for the greater good is noble, but not if it is because the life lost is treated as having little value.  The movie also carries a powerful message of forgiveness and how hard it is to achieve, but how healing it can be if it is found.  

This is not just a great Godzilla movie.

This is a great movie.