I didn't expect to cry as much as I did during Godzilla Minus One. Strong word of mouth made it sound like a great spectacle with cool action thanks to the scaly titular creature. And while there were impressive showdowns with the monster, Toho International's production, written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, is largely a meditation on post-World War II grief and survival.
The specter of trauma has long loomed over Godzilla, a creature brought awake by H-bomb testing in the 1954 original. But “Godzilla Minus One” (a black-and-white version hits theaters Friday) still expresses this literally, as it tells the story of Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot who shirks his duties and Surviving both the war and an initial encounter with the beast, only to return to the ruins of Tokyo, haunted by what he saw. Godzilla is a threat, but one that largely lives in the background. Rather, this story is about finding community after destruction and learning to value yourself in a society that considers you worthless.
As I watched, I couldn't help but think about how “Godzilla Minus One” exists in conversation with two other recent releases: Hayao Miyazaki's otherworldly exploration of grief, “The Boy and the Heron,” and Christopher Nolan's biographical drama “Oppenheimer.” .” Both “Godzilla Minus One” and “The Boy and the Heron” at least partially answer the question that some viewers asked after the release of “Oppenheimer,” which documents the invention of the atomic bomb. Namely, where was the Japanese perspective in this story about the man whose invention caused them so much pain?
Neither “Godzilla Minus One” nor “The Boy and the Heron” is explicitly about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both explore life in Japan during and after World War II, using the fantastic to depict a people struggling with the lasting effects of a devastating conflict and their anger at the rulers responsible for it. Taken together, the films also prove that literalism isn't always necessary in stories that convey messy truths about humanity.
Nolan's drama, which received 13 Oscar nominations on Tuesday, offers an intimate character study of the father of the atomic bomb that explores both his genius and his guilt after using his weapon. However, the film deliberately avoids depicting the nuclear terror that took place in Japan. That was intentional, Nolan said, because he wanted to document Oppenheimer's “subjective experience.” He told Variety: “Oppenheimer heard about the bombing at the same time as the rest of the world. I wanted to show someone starting to have a clearer picture of the unintended consequences of their actions.”
In perhaps the film's most harrowing sequence, we see the celebrations at Los Alamos after the bombing of Hiroshima through the eyes of Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy. He begins to imagine the explosion ripping through the crowd. He faces a young woman whose skin is peeling off. The cheering begins to sound frantic and frightened. He imagines stepping into a charred corpse.
Both “The Boy and the Heron” and “Godzilla Minus One” (which also each received an Oscar nomination) feature characters with fiery visions of innocents in danger. “The Boy and the Heron” begins with a child, Mahito, running through the streets of Tokyo in a vain attempt to save his mother from a fire caused by an air raid. The image of her bursting into flames and pleading for rescue is one that Mahito will return to after his fighter-plane-making father relocates him to a mysterious estate.
The new home is intended to be a refuge, but for Mahito it is a lasting reminder of what he has lost: his father married his aunt, who is a total stunner for his mother; and a nagging great blue heron taunts him, promising a meeting with his lost parent. Mahito is soon drawn into an alternate universe where the evils of the human world are on full display but perverted into even greater absurdity. (Think giant parakeets with a taste for human flesh.) The boy ultimately has to decide whether to stay where he has the chance to reshape the universe at will, or return to the broken place from which he came. He chooses the latter.
Like Mahito, Koichi, the hero of Godzilla Minus One, is also plagued by nightmares. In the opening sequence, he lands his plane on Odo Island in the final days of World War II. He says he's there for repairs, but his craft is fine. Rather, he lied to avoid the certain death that awaits him as a kamikaze pilot. And then Godzilla appears and kills almost everyone stationed at the base. Koichi returns to a devastated Tokyo and blames himself for not completing his suicide mission and effectively fighting the monster.
In Tokyo, he eventually finds a makeshift family with other war orphans, including Noriko (Minami Hamabe), a young woman who saved a baby after his parents died. But Koichi hesitates to get involved out of his own shame. In one sequence, he awakens from a nightmare to be confronted with the fiery wreckage wrought by Godzilla. He asks Noriko in horror: “This is Japan, right? I definitely came back alive, right?”
“Godzilla Minus One” takes place before the release of the first “Godzilla” — hence the title — and Yamazaki said in an interview with The Verge that he wanted to “give viewers an understanding of how Japanese survivors felt after World War II.” . Some of this can be found in Ishiro Honda's groundbreaking original, in which a woman says she “narrowly escaped the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and now this.” But by setting the new film in the immediate aftermath of the war, Yamazaki wants to convey an even fresher sense of suffering.
The characters in Godzilla Minus One are betrayed twice – certainly by the Americans, whose bomb tests on Bikini Atoll give Godzilla new power – but also by Japan itself. As a kamikaze pilot, Koichi was told that his life was worthless , and he carried that with him. In the rousing speech before beginning the effort to defeat Godzilla, a former naval weapons developer leading the attack (Hidetaka Yoshioka) explains that their goal is to avoid death rather than seek it for glory.
“This country has treated life far too cheaply,” he says, and then lists the ways in which Japan has allowed its citizens to die, for example through poorly armored tanks and fighter planes without ejector seats, and of course through suicide missions. He then continues: “That's why this time I'm proud of a citizen-led initiative that sacrifices no life at all.” This next fight is not a fight to the death, but a fight for life for the future. “It is an optimistic battle cry that resonates in the final act.
The other two films are far less hopeful. “Oppenheimer” ends with the title character saying that he has set off a chain reaction that could “destroy the entire world.” Mahito from “The Boy and the Heron” leaves the dangerous but enchanting parallel universe with the knowledge that he may forget everything that happened in it and will end up making the same mistakes as his ancestors, warmongers who try to bend people to their will to subjugate.
Only in “Godzilla Minus One” do we get a real happy ending. Well, until someone reminds us that Godzilla isn't truly defeated yet. While this label is technically a reference to upcoming sequels, it's also a sign that Koichi's torment isn't going away, just like the monster. And just as “Oppenheimer” is an example of the West still grappling with its responsibility for the destruction of World War II, Japan does the same, but in its versions the monsters are not all human.