GOJIRA

1954

Cowritten and Directed by Ishiro Honda

A.K.A. Choco gets pretentious on your butts

Plot Okay, I'll admit it. I'm a Kaiju-phile. I love all those darn giant monsters. Heck, Kaiju Big Battel even makes me smile. Probably because of that fact, I turn a mostly blind eye to the flaws of the Grandaddy of them all. (I suppose you could argue that King Kong is the true Grandaddy, making this the grandmommy, but I digress) Ahem. It's not clear to me if this will be readily available to the U.S. market any time soon, however I have had several opportunities to see this original uncut masterpiece. Including once in a large theater during the film's 50th anniversary, which was quite a treat to me. Audiences expecting the campy heroics, monster wrestling matches, and annoyingly cute children (commonly refered to as "kennys" due to the fact that about half the kids that show up with Gamera tend to have that name), a style that proved superfluous throughout the sixties and seventies, are in for quite some surprise if they were to see this grim horror with stark parallels to the nucular holocaust that Japan alone has had the burden of living through in this world. Gojira begins with a fishing boat being suddenly attacked in a manner that suggests a nucular bomb (an event that actually happened when a group of fishermen moved to close to an unmarked U.S. test site.) No one makes claims to the attack, and other boats rather quickly begin disappearing off the Japanese coast. The nation is in disarray and panic. Law enforcement and coastal guards are swamped by people desperately looking for signs of their lost friends and relatives. The Diet (similar to parlement or congress for Japan) is debating the problem endlessly, as beauraucrats are wont to do. Then the mildly primative Odo Island is attacked by some monster. The government sends a team of investigators to check things out, led by Doctor Yamane (the great Takashi Shimura). They discover enormous radioactive footprints, with paleolithic, living trilobytes inside. The tribesmen claim that a local sea-god by the name of Gojira is responsible. While exploring the island, the team encounters the beast itself. It appears to be basically a cross between a tyrannasaurus and a stegosaurus, apparently created by radioactive testing. Meanwhile, Dr. Yamane's daughter, Emiko, is having quite the crisis. She's engaged, through an arranged ceremony, to Dr. Serizawa, a collegue of her father. However, Emiko is secretly in love with family friend Ogata. One day, while attempting to come clean with Serizawa, Emiko ends up being shown her fiancee's big discovery: a terrible weapon that the doctor swears Emiko to secrecy about. You see, the man is afraid his discovery will lead to weapons at least as dangerous as the A-bomb, if not moreso. While the Diet debate on how best to handle the information of a giant monster, Gojira begins attacking ships much closer to the shore. The nation becomes torn between capturing the monster for scientific study, or flat out destroying it. Predictions that the monster is headed for the shore help sway the vote. The military prepares the city's defenses to their utmost, and the monster attacks. To the city's dismay, their attacks are usells. All they do is make the creature angry enough to reveal its most dangerous trait, a blast of searing radioactive flame from its mouth, melting all in its way. After a time, the creature appears to be calming down. Then, a bullpen of reporters, set high atop Tokyo Tower (Eiffel's little brother) begin snapping away with their cadre of flashbulbs. Gojira busts into the tower, lashing back at his personal paparazzi. A differnt disturbing point occurs when a woman takes her children out on the street as a form of suicide to join her deceased husband. Pretty bleak stuff, folks. Eventually, the titan of terror gets bored and goes away. The city is in ruins, and vast ammounts of people are left horribly injured. Emiko is working as a volunteer nurse, aiding the sick. Appalled by the devastation before her, she confesses Serizawa's secret to Ogata. He has discovered a compound which, when exposed to water, eliminates all of the oxygen atoms within an area, basically disintegrating all life as we know it. Emiko and Ogata decide they have to persuade Serizawa to use his weapon against Gojira to save humanity. When they encounter Serizawa, he is in the midst of destroying his paperwork and experiments. In a fit of madness (or is that clarity?) he has decided to eradicate all evidence of his oxygen destroyer, before it can fall into the wrong hands. Fortunately, a quick brawl with Ogata, and the watching of a children's choir performing a mournful plea for peace convince him to use the last of the destroyer compound to fight Gojira. Somehow, the task of delivering this payload falls on Serizawa and Ogata to do together, creating a magnificent scene ripe with tension, as the two must don diving gear and set off the device dangerously close to the sleeping giant. The destroyer works, and begins to disintegrate Gojira! Serazawa opts to stay behind in the water while Ogata is pulling up. He explains via radio that he is fully aware of what is going on behind his back regarding his intended's heart. Also, he's all too clear what will happen to him and his knowledge of this dangerous weapon in the near future should he survive. So he opts to kill two birds with one stone, and slashes his air hose. The group aboard take a moment to reflect on the high cost of their victory before THE END This movie is, quite simply, a masterpiece. Ishiro Honda directs this movie with a slow, deliberate pace, almost reaching an operatic level at times. This level achievement is helped by Akira Ifukube's moving score, at times rousing to action, and others intensly solemn, such as the song that the children's choir sings. Oddly enough, it could be argued that the film's weakest point lies in its special effects, which can be easily attributed to the experimental nature that SFX man Eiji Tsubaraya approached the film with. Sure, it's easy to chuckle at the obvious toy trucks the army employs, but one doesn't even notice the details in the buildings or their subsequent rubble without close examination. It's hard to believe how quickly such an incredible tour-de-force began spiraling in to saturday afternoon kiddy fare, with its cartoony sequels.

Rating I give Gojira: Four and One Half Rotting, Shambling Corpses The primative aspects of the film keep it from being perfect. However, don't be fooled. This is probably one of the most important films to ever come out of japan, and for monsters as a whole, one of the most important films of all time. If you get a chance to see it, do. Fun Fact: The word "Gojira" is, in fact, a corruption of the Japanese words for "gorilla" and "whale". Contrary to popular belief, evidence suggests that the word was more likely created in a board room full of producers and executives than it was coined as a nickname for a very obese Toho staff member.

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