#being alive to see shin godzilla and godzilla minus one? there is good in this world mr. frodo

[oldxenomorph]

just finished watching shin godzilla and ohhhhhh my god. ohhhh my godddd. hideaki anno, king, you've done it again.

[rughydrangea]

Went to see Godzilla Minus One today. Scattered thoughts with spoilers:

Last month, I watched my first-ever Godzilla movie, the original. It's incredible. Recently I also watched Shin Godzilla, and enjoyed it quite a bit. So I went to the theater to see Godzilla Minus One. It was the black and white version (gorgeous), it was the only version my local theater was showing. It took me three tries to find a seat in the theater where I wouldn't be distracted by people moving around in their seats too much, only to end up in the same row as a nine(?)-year-old girl who was crinkling plastic the entire fucking movie, and her dad, who was on the phone for half of it (I should say that I love seeing movies on the big screen but am deeply unsuited to group viewing experiences, I am very easily distracted and not able to let things go).

This is all as a preamble to say that I loved this movie and it made me cry a lot. I think a lot about how governments dispose of the lives and bodies of people, both for my job and also in my spare time because that's just the kind of girl I am. So Shikishima's journey here really just broke my heart. From the moment he was ordered to undertake a kamikaze mission, his government effectively told him that he needed to be dead--the calculation had been made that his body would best serve their needs in death. And most of the movie is him failing to break past the belief that that was the truth. He says to Noriko, "I'm someone who should have died." Of course this is mixed with his survivor's guilt and shame over his cowardice on Odo, but the original sin, so to speak, was his desire to live when the state had marked him out for death. And even though there is a part of him that still wants to live, he can't reconcile that with everything that came before, leading him to multiple breaks with reality, in which he is convinced that he already died, and all of what he sees now is the dream of a ghost.

Alongside that, we have the pointedly civilian plan to defeat Godzilla. Though everyone involved is ex-military, the new mission is framed as a universal chance for redemption from their prior experience of being used, lied to, and treated as worthless by their government. "Neither the American nor Japanese government can be trusted," one of the participants says. This whole team-up is essentially an argument that in the wake of the destruction, death, and horror of the war, the state has become, if not an enemy, then at the least irrelevant to the kind of purely positive goal these men are working towards. It is by working with fellow civilians on behalf of other civilians that good can be done.

But through all of this Shikishima is still in hell. And the sequence of him flying towards Godzilla really had my heart breaking. He had spent so long framing death as the only way to atone for his failings on Odo and as a kamikaze pilot. So when he utilizes the ejector seat and chooses to live, it was very moving to me. In that moment, not only did he choose life, he defied the government that found no worth in his life, and the previous version of himself who believed it. He insisted that he deserved to live. And it made me cry. It's making me cry now thinking about it! States are made by people. But when people act on behalf of states, they do appalling things, and follow a code of morality that to me is utterly alien and evil. Any goal that requires the sacrificing of a life is not valid--whether that goal is justice or safety or conquest. It's never fucking worth it. Life is precious. Every human life is precious. Taking a single one is an unimaginable sin. How beautiful that Shikishima takes his life back.

Other thoughts:

--Noriko being alive didn't work for me, unless they do something fun with it in a sequel?

--Kamiki Ryonosuke... I found him captivating. He and I have the same birthday! (Though he is, tragically, younger than me.) He was the voice of Taki in Your Name?!?!?!?!?!?!!? I may seek out some of his other projects.

--In spite of the fact that he like exclusively kills people, I love my big boy Godzilla and am always sad when they kill him at the end.

--Just imagine being a dad who is taking your kids to the movies, and you're on the phone for half of it! Was his goal to makes his kids think he didn't want to be with them? I truly hate going to the movies with other people. Last week was much better, when I went to see Poor Things and in the theater it was just me and one old guy. He was very quiet! And then we had a nice chat about the movie afterwards (we both liked it). (The theater I go to the most often is a local one-screener owned by my school, and the programming is incredible, but the combination of old locals and students in the audience is actively damaging to my mental health, old people and teenagers are equally ignorant about how to behave in movies, though it's quite simple--you just shut up and watch!)