Godzilla Minus One's Most Impressive aspect.

I can remember like it was yesterday my first time experiencing a sense of philosophy emanating strongly from a film it wasn't any one film, but rather many that helped give rise to an awakening a sense of my political ideology, but one film that stood out for me in the sense of the nature of war and it's direct conflict of interest with our humanity was 1995’s “Crimson Tide”. I remember being puzzled them as to why this seems like it was being painted as a strong debate when it was pretty clear that one side was unconscionably reckless with human lives in a global scale in the balance. I remember being wowed by the line “In a nuclear world the true enemy is war itself”. The sense of power not stemming from the words in and of themselves and what they might suggest about the man who spoke them, but more-so how they triggered the other respondents including Gene Hackman’s Capt. Frank Ramsay in that scene. The way that the characters, (not necessarily the movie) framed Denzel's Commander Ron Hunter as somewhat cowardly in his apprehension to be involved in something that in and of itself should be regarded as a human evil. The movie paints what should be a pretty simple answer as a complex quandary; To wait to press “send” on nuclear Holocaust without clarity as to whether it's necessary, or not to. This would follow me into my experience watching 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, and the now infamous scene of private Upham’s act of cowardice. In a scene that would elicit a lot of palpable audience anger towards the character (which I initially felt as well) Commander Ron Hunter’s words “the true enemy was war itself” would reappear now calcified in the fires of my rage against private Upham's lack of action on screen. Those words now entrenched in my gut I saw the complexity around the repelling nature of cowardice in and of itself, and the repelling nature of putting people in these conditions that inevitably wreak havoc on a person's stress responses and in a more broad sense their humanity. Movies should not be relied upon for our politics seeing their position within our systems of oppression, but they can at times reinforce them, bond them, make them tighter. Whereas those movies were moments, and yet so memorable as concrete moments for my own personal political growth, Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One, a boisterous, operatic, blockbuster film that pretty much never stops from go, it sets the entire movie around the subject of cowardice as much as it does around the King of the Monsters himself. My extremely positive impression comes not a a reinforcement of my now pretty firm, but still evolving politics, but of my genuine glee that those thoughts would be so adeptly presented in a film and a boisterous, operatic emotionally dense blockbuster no less. The film opens with a kamikaze pilot named Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) landing his plane on a repair base. His arrival is immediately called into question because of the obvious; he is a kamikaze pilot, his one job is to die in service of this grand cause, and yet here he is back from the mission…alive. Ultimately a clear answer as to what has happened and why he's still here is evaded, which only makes the answer that much clearer. What becomes a question is not whether or not he evaded his “duty” but the ethics of that duty in the first place. That question is ultimately the thesis of the movie, centered around the idea of courage especially in lieu of actions by the state that could be called cowardice in and of itself. The arc of this movie is the arc of this man's courage, and where he finds it is I think an interesting treatise on where and when cowardice actually counts as cowardice.

In Rob reiner’s adaptation of Aaron Sorkin's play “A Few Good Men” it is pretty clear that the ultimate philosophical reveal of the film is that though Dawson and Downey acted on a supposedly “legal” order in the strict sense of the word, that they exhibited cowardice in their inability to take a moral stand against what they were asked to do. The film and play are meant to make clear the difference between legality and morality. In Godzilla Minus One, much of the same is present, except “A Few Good Men” is a courtroom drama where this kind of artistic discourse is fully expected, Godzilla: Minus One is a large scale monster movie. After his actions are clearly discovered one of the soldiers on base a skilled mechanic named Sōsaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) approaches Kōichi Shikishima with these words of understanding and compassion; "Why obey an order to die honorably when the outcome is already clear". That “outcome” is most immediately identified as the second world war itself and the fact that the war was a lost cause, but just a little digging would further reveal that even before the outcome was clear; the cause was a lost one, further still because imperialism is a lost cause. Once you arrive there, the notion of cowardice in this context is questionable. Even as we watch with anticipation of the moment he might one day redeem himself, we are treated to a stout redressing of the supposed hierarchy of the bloodthirsty needs of a state to increase its holdings in the world over the need for human bonds and life itself to be considered precious. The rest of the movie is not really about him making up for being a failed kamikaze pilot who rightfully sought to protect the sanctity of his life over the need to please his overseers, nor for being scared again when he knew that the outcome was sure, but to learn that when the conditions were right for him to be a hero, his heroism would arrive.

About a third of the way into the film a meeting is held between those who have decided to risk their lives in what is to be a final stand against Godzilla, the monster who represents the folly of American and Japanese imperialism, and eco-terrorism. Before he adjourns the meeting former naval engineer Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) tells the members of this rag tag strike team to go home and spend the remaining time with their families. A soldier responds “You mean be prepared”- the logical assumption being for death. Noda, full of regret that betrays a man who knows he's played a role in the loss of lives in this war, takes a beat before unconsciously shaking his head “no”, and replies solemnly; "Come to think of it, this country has treated life far too cheaply”. He then goes on to lay out the various ways in which they showed this disdain which runs the gamut from indirect (logistical callousness) to direct (Kamikaze Pilots) callousness for lives. He then (beginning to find passion in his voice) says “he would take pride in a citizen led effort that risks no lives at all”. The two most important words in that small speech are “country” and “citizen”, the context in which they are used and the difference in the attitudes associated with them, as well as the difference displayed in the mood of their orator. Each of these things are separate and distinctively different feelings which then forces the inherent understanding of the disassociation between citizen and country. The former is often victimized and exploited by the latter using the inherent desire of human beings to gather into social groups as a ploy to create a false sense of oneness that can be exploited in any number of ways, including engraving a sense of duty to what amount to the wills of a greedy few and not their individual or collective needs. The films defense of what is normally framed as cowardice magnifies the tension between the idea of country and it's connection to citizenry. In pointing out that this country was frivolous and apathetic towards life, Godzilla Minus One declares that this mostly citizen led effort will be about life and a fight for the future explicitly absolving Koichi and to some extent the audience for their empathy of the crime of cowardice. The realization being that to assert such a claim would be akin to victim blaming, taking us back to the first half of the Air technicians words “Why obey an order to "die honorably" when the outcome is clear”.

The theme that comes most clear in Godzilla minus one is the shame, doubt, and trauma, inflicted upon everyday average citizens indoctrinated by the powers that be of any nation state to take on the mindset of their conquerors. After that the redemption that extends out from freeing oneself from the shackles of incentivized homicide, and into a return to our actual social needs; one being the primacy of life itself, of which as Commander Hunter so articulated; war is the natural enemy of. It's a heavy concept fit snugly inside this stunning, roaring, spectacle of a movie and it's the true glory of this Godzilla film. A visual culmination years coming in my own cinematic journey towards the answer to a question began in the 90s with one submarine movie, all which arrived from the depths of either the sea or my mind.