Shin Godzilla
Director: Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi
Year: 2016
Duration: 2 hours
Country: Japan
AKA Godzilla Resurgence
Godzilla is back in the film "Shin Godzilla"
and is stomping all over Tokyo yet once again. On a personal note, it was
just nice seeing a disaster film in which New York City and my condo was
not destroyed for a change. Tokyo doesn’t make out so well. This one could
have been titled Godzilla vs. the Government Bureaucrats as it seems to
take special pleasure in skewering the inability of the Japanese government
to get anything done as every action gets bogged down in red tape, indecision,
political calculation and a strict adherence to every law in the books.
Also, probably not by chance is the fact that nearly all these bureaucrats
are men. They finally decide that they can attack Godzilla once they find
a regulation that allows the government to destroy pests. Some pest. But
at times you have to wonder that if they can’t destroy Godzilla (called
Gojira in Japan) with weapons, they could certainly talk this creature to
death as this has to be the talkiest Kaiju film ever and often at the speed
of light. Kaiju for those not in the know is the term used for the genre
of Japanese monster films that also included Gamera (my favorite), Mothra,
Rodan and others who have cheerfully been obliterating Japan now for about
60 years. Throw in some good old anti-American sentiments – well we want
to nuke Tokyo – and you have a very political film among the wreckage.
But that is really the origin of Godzilla
if you go back to the very first one in 1954 which was a harsh critique
of the nuclear age. Not too surprising considering the war. In that one
Godzilla is a creation of nuclear waste and that is also the premise of this
one and if you throw in the disaster at Fukushima in 2011 the film is even
more pertinent to our times. By the way, the original Godzilla was corrupted
for American audiences by inserting a part for Raymond Burr, deleting other
scenes and dubbing it into English. It is a mess and helped make Kaiju films
a bit of a joke in America, but a few years back I had the chance to see
the original at Film Forum and was shocked at what a truly great film it
is.
When the film gets away from the bureaucratic
inaction and infighting – which in truth is fairly interesting from an outside
perspective – it has some wonderful scenes of pure mayhem and destruction
that are delightful on so many levels. In most of the Godzilla films I have
seen there are sympathetic roles for civilians – children often who have
a bond with Godzilla – Godzilla is never really evil and often actually
saves Japan from an even worse threat – but this film just jumps into the
action from the moment it begins and bothers not with any sub-plots around
romance, little girls or civilians in the path of destruction. And this Godzilla
is perhaps not evil but is as pure a destructive weapon as could be devised.
Don’t be put off by the initial appearance of Godzilla in which he looks
like a damn sock puppet pushing over buildings – I was horrified - but it
evolves into the Godzilla we love and fear soon enough.
Rating 7.5/10