Shin Godzilla/ Godzilla Resurgence

Shin Godzilla/ Godzilla Resurgence
 (2016 Winner of Japan Academy Awards Best Picture)


Do you ever have times when you just can't get yourself to read?

I'm having a bit of that this month. Much of it is connected to schedule, not a busy one, but one that doesn't involve riding a train for two hours each day. Less train, less time to read.

So, while I am still in the midst of numerous books I hope to share, as well as at least one more translator interview I hope to have up before the cherry blossoms come, I will supplement with a few movie reviews.

These movies will fall into two categories:

1. Winners of the best picture at the Japanese academy awards.

2. The films of Hirokazu Kore-eda, one of which is already up, and I hope these will culminate with a look at Shoplifters later this month.

So, here we have the winner of Best Picture in 2016, the oh so Japanese, but oh so not usual Academy Award-ish Godzilla Resurgence.

Looking through the list of winners (let alone nominated films) it is immediately obvious that a huge number of movies that would never be considered for the American version are included here.

Part of me wants to scoff and say, "shame on you Japan, the country of Kurosawa and Miyazaki. How can you nominate, and reward a... a monster movie". However, the other part of me thinks it is great to have a system that at least rewards genre movies.

Of final note, most of the movies I'll be watching will be done in Japanese, the ones on Netflix, with Japanese subtitles, the ones on Prime, with no subtitles... and the ones I absolutely love will be rematched with the English later. My Japanese is not perfect, though passable for the project, so I will  not claim that I was able to fully take in all subtleties during these watching. Please keep that in mind and feel free to disagree with me in the comments.

And now to the movie itself.

Shin-Godzilla is a few movies rolled into one. Just watching it with the sound off would allow anyone to see this. The first is a monster movie, and the other is a film about closed door politics. The filming of each of these is so drastically different that it separates the stories more than I would have liked. I think a bit more mixing of the human characters with the monsters on the same screen early on would have been wise.

With that in mind, if you take the two movies and look at them each alone, they both work.

The monster movie is pure fun and destruction. Among the overuse of explanation subtitles included in the film are the names of each neighborhood being burned and destroyed, as if people in Tokyo cinemas would cheer for the ones they hated, and cry when their own were destroyed. Silly idea, maybe, but that is the feeling of these scenes. The monster seems to morph from pure real effects to digital as the movie goes on, as if the filmmakers were providing a history of Godzilla as the monster grew.

The political scenes, though cheaply shot (OK, so, these people would hunker down in a bunker, sure, but it's really obvious that they spend all the money on the monster side and were budgeting on sets here), work well as satire. Much of the dialogue comes across as a tongue in cheek commentary on Japanese politicians and how they speak to each other and outsiders and maybe also on how they so seldom listen.

On the negative side, the choice of an actress who clearly cannot speak English to play an Japanese-American sent to offer America's help is odd, and actually annoying for anyone who speaks English, like walking by Japanese school children after the latest Japanglish song or comedy sketch has become popular... "Oh, you have a pineapple, and a pen... I see...".

Overall, Godzilla Resurgence is fun enough. I certainly liked it more than the average American version over the last 50 years. I would lightly recommend it, keeping in mind that it is odd to think about comparing it to some of the great, but less seen Japanese films that come out.

But, for those films we wait until next time.