Gojira (Godzilla)
Up until today, I’ve only see a few “Godzilla” films: the 1956 American reworking with Raymond Burr; the terrible 1998 remake; and the 2000 entry, “Godzilla 2000.” I have always wanted to watch the original Japanese version of the iconic movie monster, and with the release of it on Blu-Ray via the Criterion Collection, as well as a new attempt at an America remake of “Godzilla” coming next year, I felt like the time had come.
The 1950s were the heyday of the monster movie. With the nuclear age and the Cold War upon them, filmmakers in America and elsewhere used what we understood of nuclear energy to create sci-fi films that were infused with the anxieties felt at the time. Usually, it involved a nuclear test that created a giant lizard-like creature that rampaged, and destroyed some of the great cities of the world. Of these, Godzilla, created by the filmmakers at Toho studios, is the most well-known, and the most logical. After all, it was Japan that was the first country to ever be hit by nuclear weapons– it makes absolute sense for the country’s filmmakers to try and process that through art, and try to make something entertaining, as well.
In that respect, they succeeded, and honestly, you don’t even really need to actually see the film to know that; all one must do is look at the countless sequels and spin-offs and variations the Japanese have played off of the creature over the past 60 years to see how popular the monster remains. The Japanese even have a word for such monsters: Kaiju, or “strange creature” (translated in English to mean “giant monster”). This summer, Guillermo Del Toro co-opted the word for his superb 2013 adventure film, “Pacific Rim,” and it was a fitting tribute to the legacy the Japanese have given the world with their distinctive brand of massive destruction.
Back to “Godzilla,” however. The film follows the traditional monster movie opening by giving us a tease of what we’re in for, as a Japanese ship is attacked, and capsized. We don’t see the monster yet, but we know that something big caused the commotion. The authorities on the mainland are in a panic, and don’t have any answers. Meanwhile, we see the inhabitants of a small village, who have legends of a man-eating monster that rose from the sea, try and ward off the evil. It is all for naught, and the village is destroyed. A research team is sent to the island, and there we get our first glimpse of Godzilla. As it happens, it was nuclear testing that awoke Godzilla from his sleep, and at over 50-feet high, pulsing with radioactive life, he will be difficult to kill.
For the first half of the movie, the focus is on the human reactions and deliberations about how to combat Godzilla. At around the 50-minute mark, however, Godzilla takes over, and it’s here where the film becomes a milestone in epic filmmaking. I know; it’s hard to imagine using that word “milestone,” given the campier direction a lot of entries in the series go to, but this first film, though an obvious amalgamation of models, miniatures, and a guy in a rubber suit, is also a powerful piece of cinematic imagination. The effects are hardly seamless, but the overall impact of the material and the ways in which co-writer/director Ishiro Honda shoots and edits the material is unquestionably marvelous and entertaining. In a way, Honda is taking the final sequence in New York of the original “King Kong,” and upping the ante in ways that wouldn’t have been possible for that landmark in 1933. And the images of a devastated city, which would have resonated profoundly with the Japanese less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are impossible to shake, and give the film a depth later entries just couldn’t touch. That sense of loss and tragedy makes “Godzilla” not just a worthy successor to the legacy of “King Kong,” but also an important piece of world cinema that had a huge part to play in the future of movies for generations to come.
