Godzilla Minus One

A unanimous thumbs-up from THC, the THC Son, and the THC SIL, who watched the movie earlier this week.  Far superior to Napoleon, the last movie THC viewed.

This is a complete reboot of the Godzilla series.  It goes back to recreate Godzilla's origin story so there is a titanic monster and a lot of destruction but what elevates the movie is that it is also a story of the people of Japan coming to grips with losing a disastrous war and deciding upon their future.  It is the human element that makes this a resoundingly good film.

The story starts just before the end of the war when a kamikaze pilot lands his plane on an isolated Japanese-held island in the Pacific.  He has decided not to go ahead with his mission and the small group of mechanics at the airfield soon recognize it.  That evening a modest-size Godzilla attacks, wiping out all but one of the mechanics and the pilot, who freezes at a chance to kill the monster.

The pilot returns to Tokyo at the end of the war as a broken man, to find his neighborhood reduced to rubble by American air raids in which his parents have been killed.  His next door neighbor, who has lost her husband and children in the raids berates him for failing to complete his kamikaze mission.  He then encounters a young woman with a baby and he provides them shelter in his damaged small home.  The woman has lost her parents in a raid and the baby is not hers, she took the child at the imploring of a dying mother she came across in the chaos of the bombing.

We then see the beginning of the rebuilding of Tokyo and the struggle of those surviving and their adjustment to a new world, as well as the guilt that consumes the pilot and others.  It makes for a riveting and, at times, moving, experience.  And Godzilla returns to threaten Tokyo, a monster supercharged and enlarged by the American A-bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.

The cinematography and visuals are very well done but it is the story and the actors that make this film.  Ryunosuke Kamiki and Minami Hamabe are outstanding as the pilot and the woman he encounters.  Secondary characters are also well done, particularly Hidetaka Yoshioki as a brainy naval engineer and Kuranosuke Sasaki as the world-weary captain of a decrepit wooden minesweeper.  

Enjoy a couple of trailers.  These emphasize the Godzilla aspects and not the quieter scenes which make up much more of the film: