Top 25 Favourite Films: #10 Shin Godzilla (Dir. Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi, 2016)
#10. Shin Godzilla. Directed by Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi, 2016.
Godzilla is, it goes without saying, an icon of Japanese cinema. Alongside perhaps Dragonball, Sailor Moon, and the myriad creatures of Pokémon, he is a shorthand for Japan, in all its forms, and undeniably one of its great cultural exports. But strip away the decades of enjoyably creaky (from a western perspective) rubber suited battles between the big G and a rogue's gallery of odd looking adversaries, and one arrives back at 1954's Godzilla, a solemn, often disturbing black-and-white film where Godzilla represents, in stark terms, the aftermath and effect of a country in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and broken by war.
Sixty-two years later, Shin Godzilla (Shin, for the record, simply translates as "New"), feels very much like a return to this view of Godzilla, not as a 200ft babyface to take on all number of monstorous heels, in what amounts to two-hour rubber suit wrestling matches, but as terrifying monstrosity, a metaphor for another nuclear disaster in Japan. Directed by Hideaki Anno, the infamous creator of Evangelion, among other anime series, and his long-time friend and tokusatsu (in short, a Japanese term for special effects, ranging from monster movies to sci-fi), Shinji Higuchi, Shin Godzilla not only comes close to being the greatest Godzilla movie ever, but one of the greatest monster movies too.
What Shin Godzilla is, in short terms, is two-fold. One, it is Godzilla returned to the role of all-destroying adversary, and certainly, this is obvious from the moment he first appears, and in each of his subsequent, visually horrifying appearances, as he evolves from merely a tail in the harbour, to bumbling snake-like creature that practically slithers and crashes its way through Tokyo, to an upright, diseased looking creature that wreaks havoc and then disappears. All of these forms are beautifully rendered grotesques, with hideous, gaping bug eyes, scarred and cracked skin, and all brought to life by a mixture of anamatronics, CGI and of course, intricate model work making their destruction all the more distressing.
But all of these are simply the entrée for the fourth form, which, whilst retaining the vague upright dinosaur look of the classic Godzilla...is like nothing we've ever seen before. It is, simply put, one of the most iconically disturbing looking monsters ever created for the entire monster movie genre, a massive, cancerous looking creature, with exposed flesh, a gaping maw of a mouth, and looks, in a word, horrifying. Anno simply lets this creature speak for itself-this is Fukushima, Tohoku, the corruption and corner-cutting and inepitude and, without question, the entire concept of nuclear power given flesh to run amock in Tokyo, to bring this all to bear against the seat of power.
And nowhere is this seen better than in a truly iconic, and truly shocking sequence in which, after an abortive nuclear bomb attack, Godzilla simply annhiliates much of downtown Tokyo. This firebreath is a weapon we've seen Godzilla use countless times before, but never on this scale, never this disturbing, with Anno's longtime collaborator, composer Shirō Sagisu only adding to the darkness of the scene, with his dark, choral theme for Godzilla, until we are left with Godzilla alone, moving towards camera, against a sea of fire.
And alongside this monsterous rendition of Godzilla is the other strand that has always coloured Anno's work, from Evangelion onwards, the ying to the destructive yang of monsters destroying each other. Politics. In this case, a sharply satrical satire aimed against practically every element of the Japanese, and indeed the American government. Our heroes are, after all, a lowly Japanese civil servant who, through the loss of pretty much every character above him in power, proves instrumental in defeating Godzilla through teamwork and ingenity
What this leads to, in some well-wrought and suspensful scenes, is not only Hideaki Anno's trademark "preparing for battle scenes" in which military hardware rolls into action, but also in boardroom scenes where our heroes, talk, plan, and argue through scenes, first trying to cover up the appearance of the monster, then slowly, and rather reluctantly, begin to face up to the threat, before getting the Americans involved, as Godzilla, and the crisis begins to escalate, a clear parallel to the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake, until a plan is put in place to defeat Godzilla, not with weaponry, but with human ingenuity.
Between these two poles, undeniably, Anno and Higuchi craft a masterpiece of a Godzilla movie, every inch the equal of the original, both focused around a core of horrifying monster, and clear political critique of the nation that birthed it; never has Godzilla been so powerful, frightening, but most of all, relevant.
Godzilla is, it goes without saying, an icon of Japanese cinema. Alongside perhaps Dragonball, Sailor Moon, and the myriad creatures of Pokémon, he is a shorthand for Japan, in all its forms, and undeniably one of its great cultural exports. But strip away the decades of enjoyably creaky (from a western perspective) rubber suited battles between the big G and a rogue's gallery of odd looking adversaries, and one arrives back at 1954's Godzilla, a solemn, often disturbing black-and-white film where Godzilla represents, in stark terms, the aftermath and effect of a country in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and broken by war.
Sixty-two years later, Shin Godzilla (Shin, for the record, simply translates as "New"), feels very much like a return to this view of Godzilla, not as a 200ft babyface to take on all number of monstorous heels, in what amounts to two-hour rubber suit wrestling matches, but as terrifying monstrosity, a metaphor for another nuclear disaster in Japan. Directed by Hideaki Anno, the infamous creator of Evangelion, among other anime series, and his long-time friend and tokusatsu (in short, a Japanese term for special effects, ranging from monster movies to sci-fi), Shinji Higuchi, Shin Godzilla not only comes close to being the greatest Godzilla movie ever, but one of the greatest monster movies too.
What Shin Godzilla is, in short terms, is two-fold. One, it is Godzilla returned to the role of all-destroying adversary, and certainly, this is obvious from the moment he first appears, and in each of his subsequent, visually horrifying appearances, as he evolves from merely a tail in the harbour, to bumbling snake-like creature that practically slithers and crashes its way through Tokyo, to an upright, diseased looking creature that wreaks havoc and then disappears. All of these forms are beautifully rendered grotesques, with hideous, gaping bug eyes, scarred and cracked skin, and all brought to life by a mixture of anamatronics, CGI and of course, intricate model work making their destruction all the more distressing.
But all of these are simply the entrée for the fourth form, which, whilst retaining the vague upright dinosaur look of the classic Godzilla...is like nothing we've ever seen before. It is, simply put, one of the most iconically disturbing looking monsters ever created for the entire monster movie genre, a massive, cancerous looking creature, with exposed flesh, a gaping maw of a mouth, and looks, in a word, horrifying. Anno simply lets this creature speak for itself-this is Fukushima, Tohoku, the corruption and corner-cutting and inepitude and, without question, the entire concept of nuclear power given flesh to run amock in Tokyo, to bring this all to bear against the seat of power.
And nowhere is this seen better than in a truly iconic, and truly shocking sequence in which, after an abortive nuclear bomb attack, Godzilla simply annhiliates much of downtown Tokyo. This firebreath is a weapon we've seen Godzilla use countless times before, but never on this scale, never this disturbing, with Anno's longtime collaborator, composer Shirō Sagisu only adding to the darkness of the scene, with his dark, choral theme for Godzilla, until we are left with Godzilla alone, moving towards camera, against a sea of fire.
And alongside this monsterous rendition of Godzilla is the other strand that has always coloured Anno's work, from Evangelion onwards, the ying to the destructive yang of monsters destroying each other. Politics. In this case, a sharply satrical satire aimed against practically every element of the Japanese, and indeed the American government. Our heroes are, after all, a lowly Japanese civil servant who, through the loss of pretty much every character above him in power, proves instrumental in defeating Godzilla through teamwork and ingenity
What this leads to, in some well-wrought and suspensful scenes, is not only Hideaki Anno's trademark "preparing for battle scenes" in which military hardware rolls into action, but also in boardroom scenes where our heroes, talk, plan, and argue through scenes, first trying to cover up the appearance of the monster, then slowly, and rather reluctantly, begin to face up to the threat, before getting the Americans involved, as Godzilla, and the crisis begins to escalate, a clear parallel to the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake, until a plan is put in place to defeat Godzilla, not with weaponry, but with human ingenuity.
Between these two poles, undeniably, Anno and Higuchi craft a masterpiece of a Godzilla movie, every inch the equal of the original, both focused around a core of horrifying monster, and clear political critique of the nation that birthed it; never has Godzilla been so powerful, frightening, but most of all, relevant.
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