Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 11 (Godzilla Minus One Minus Color)

Now that we have that magical ritual out of the way, where were we? Ah yes. Talking more about kaiju movies, specifically one I really love. I've seen this one once before, of course. I couldn't wait for the spooky season to come around and I really wanted to see it, so I saw it. I was absolutely blown the fuck away by it. If I may be so bold, Godzilla Minus One may be the best Godzilla picture of them all. It's a stellar picture that mixes the spectacle of the giant monster with real and raw human emotion and angst, all of it born from the specific vibes that were in the air in post-war Japan. Movies like Godzilla 1984 or GMK tried to do that back to basics approach, where they were only in conversation with the 1954 original and building off of that. Godzilla Minus One does it better than any of them, because it takes a different approach: Rather than being a story-based followup building off of "in 1954 a giant fucking monster rampaged through Japan", Godzilla Minus One is a tonal twin to the 1954 original. That somber mournful tone of a country still reeling from an atomic horror, struggling to rebuild when half its world was blasted to bits by an incomprehensible thing of infinite power. Other Godzilla movies I like have struck near that vibe, of their present-day Japan using Godzilla as a metaphor for present-day anxieties like the Cold War or the 2011 tsunami. Godzilla Minus One nails it, and goes even further beyond.

That's not the whole story to this watch, of course. I may have seen the film before, but there are different versions of this thing out there. The one I watched before was a full color movie. Today's watch was Godzilla Minus One Minus Color, which does exactly what it says and turns proceedings into a black and white movie. I understand there are some different cuts and edits between versions, but it's been so long since I saw the color version that I did not spot them. It felt like the same movie, but somehow it felt better. Stripped of color, Godzilla Minus One somehow surpasses itself in a way I can't readily pin down. The late film critics Siskel and Ebert once did a special episode of their review show where they praised the virtues of old black and white cinema, and part of what they liked about such vintage cinema was the filmic unreality that black and white offers. That could be part of it. Maybe it's that putting the tonal twin of the 1954 original in black and white helps to accentuate their mirroring more. I can't explain it, but watching the film in black and white just felt right. Godzilla Minus One was a masterpiece, and Minus Color makes it even more of one. 5.5 stars out of 5 if I could. It's that fucking good... but why is it that good? What is this film about?

Godzilla Minus One is a film about healing. Godzilla, as originally envisioned in 1954, was this symbol of post-war trauma and the fear of the atom bomb. That is present, but added to it is this sense of morose survivor's guilt, as those who remain alive after the war struggle to live with the knowledge that they remain while so many others are dead. Consider the protagonist, Koichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot who diverted at the last minute out of fear and gets to witness Godzilla attack the island he fled to. He could shoot the beast with his plane guns, but does not out of fear. Godzilla kills everyone on the island save for two, and the other survivor Tachibana (aha, now I can jam with the use of that name in a Godzilla movie!) blames Koichi for freezing and not firing. A survivor in Koichi's hometown, in tatters from the war, blames him for not doing his duty and dying for Japan. Rationally, what would be the point? One more fighter pilot crashing his plane into an American battleship or something wouldn't have changed the outcome of the war. Koichi shooting Godzilla on that island wouldn't have magically killed the beast and saved everyone. We know that, and yet Koichi is haunted by that specter of survivor's guilt for the whole movie. Good people are dead and this cowardly dumbass is alive.

So much of the film is about trying to rebuild in spite of that, Koichi building back up the tatters of his childhood home, a partner and child in his care. Despite it all, the guilt haunts him. He wakes up at night screaming, he insists in a panic that this is a dream and he's really dead and in hell because he does not deserve a good life, because he's alive and he should be dead for some greater purpose. Still, he tries to rebuild. Oh how he tries. Then, as always in these pictures, Godzilla. Godzilla is truly a nightmarish spectacle to behold in this picture, from the desperate escape on the high seas to the later attack on Ginza. It's incomprehensible, indestructible, and it rips Koichi away from the woman he loves. There can be no happy ending for Koichi in his own mind. The guilt and anguish at surviving, the ghosts of those who died due to his hesitance, won't let him. To him, the only way to win is to die. The war was a lost cause, and dying for it wouldn't have changed the result. Dying to stop Godzilla, though? Aye. That could give him redemption and purpose.

And then, the climax of the film. To paraphrase the line which broke me a decade ago in Doctor Who... Koichi, do you think your life has so little meaning that sacrificing it would make no difference to those you love? To those who love you? He seeks out the help of Tachibana to retrofit a plane with bombs to make the ultimate kamikaze vehicle. It's only fitting. Tachibana, his accuser, the one who holds him in contempt for getting those people killed, will be the one to weld together his flying coffin. A sacrifice imbued with meaning, a way for Koichi to rest his restless guilt. It's Tachibana, of all people, who refutes this. That name again, giving hope and optimism in the darkest times and learning to forgive those who have wronged you. (Hell, one of the boats in the climax is named the Hibiki, so she is here in all facets and forms.) Redemption is possible, and it's given with one single word to Koichi.

Live.

Godzilla Minus One is a masterclass of a kaiju picture, and it manages to do so with equal parts spectacle and soul. Befitting the 70 year anniversary of Godzilla, it circles back around to the original, its tonal twin in so many respects. If you give even a solitary shit about Godzilla, you owe it to yourself to see the picture. I teared up watching a Godzilla picture today. I will say that again. I teared up at the human emotion in a fucking Godzilla motion picture today. That's a rare thing for a franchise with a big lizard blowing shit up, but this one did it. Godzilla Minus One. The best Godzilla picture ever made. Absolutely exquisite.