Godzilla Minus One - Oneiric Redemption
Thoughts On: Godzilla Minus One (2023)
Beyond the rubble of post-war Tokyo a monster arises from the ocean depths to haunt a failed kamikaze pilot.
Godzilla Minus One was surprisingly brilliant. As an action and straight monster film it is only so-so; the realism and logic of the plot is highly questionable, and though this sits just under the 120 min mark, the editing leaves much feeling rushed. With slower pacing and smarter decisions in the edit this then could resonate stronger emotionally. However, I would not care to criticise this as an action film, nor from a perspective of realism. The recent American Godzilla films that I've seen are, in comparison to the original Gojira, silly sci-fi messes. Godzilla, in the original 1954 film, was an entity of evil and the narrative he operated in was subtextually dense; the film therefore reflected much about the horrors of power in post-war Japan. The Americans have made Godzilla Earth's ancestral hero and some kind of Avenger (perhaps an ode to the Godzilla monster universe that developed from '55 on), replacing the melodrama of the original with realism (typhlodrama). The results are not that interesting to me; the humanity portrayed within is almost insipid. Godzilla Minus One embodies the narrative approach of the original, elevating narrative above spectacle while nonetheless retaining impressive cinematographic moments of visual flare - especially in the design of Gojira and the epic set-pieces. In such, the creature becomes a projection of a collective and personal nightmare in post-war Japan; his manifestation an affront to the dreams of the traumatised. Highlighted by the narrative is a conflict in culture between death and purpose; dying families begging loved ones to live on while a country at war commands them to die in honour. The oneiric nature of the narrative places our protagonist on a boundary between collective responsibility and personal desperation with Gojira emerging, symbolically and dramatically speaking, from his tortured unconscious. Gojira is then a residual and personal war bound to and haunting our main character, one that encompasses his interior conflict, caught in an insane death-obsessed aspect of culture while attempting to seek redemption. In settling his personal war, Koichi finds balance and secures redemption by asserting the value of his own life via the protection and elevation of others - primarily his adopted daughter. Such redefines the kamikaze notion of self-sacrifice projected from war, underlying it with genuine purpose and true familial honour. For this, I can't help but say that Godzilla Minus One is a special film. I struggle to imagine how the newer American Godzilla films compare, but perhaps I'll have to give them a go following this.
