W.B. at the Movies: Shin Godzilla

I tell people I am not obsessed with Godzilla, but there I was last Thursday, a beautiful summer afternoon, indoors in the dark, watching a nine-year-old Godzilla movie that is back on the big screen for a few days.

There was a time when I would argue that Shin Godzilla may be the best film in the series since the first one in 1954. But then 2023 brought us Godzilla Minus One, and not even this 2016 masterpiece comes close.

Shin Godzilla is brimming with dark humor. Countless mostly forgettable bureaucrats are identified in bold captions as they endlessly discuss what to do about the giant beast wreaking havoc in the rivers and then the streets around Tokyo. They adjourn one meeting in order to call another meeting into order and then another, while the monster — which is kind of cute in its earlier form — casually tosses boats and cars around like a golden retriever playing in a children’s pool filled with plastic balls.

Eventually even the bureaucrats realize how ineffectual they are, and the task of resolving the Godzilla problem is placed in the hands of a crack team of nerds and misfits. Politicians depicted not only as buffoons but narcissists who see opportunities for advancement in human tragedy! Now this is my kind of Godzilla movie.

In case we didn’t get the joke, we are treated to a press conference in which an officious official blithely reassures the public that the river creature may have legs but it is simply too large to support its own weight and therefore cannot make landfall to threaten Japan’s interior. A meek aide whispers in his ear, and he cries, “It HAS?!”

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is depicted as a tone-deaf bully willing to sacrifice Tokyo by dropping a nuclear bomb on Godzilla while the monster is wreaking its havoc downtown. The task force’s mission is to stop Godzilla before the U.S. can nuke Japan a third time.

It’s a rousing story in its own way and depicts the big guy as a terrifying threat, as opposed to so many movies when Godzilla is kind of a hero. The scary monster is the Godzilla I knew and loved — at his worst, he is a metaphor for the nuclear bomb, the worst manmade disaster ever unleashed.

I’m still not sure if going inside on that beautiful afternoon was the best life choice, but this was a limited run of a film that really ought to be seen on the big screen.

To my original point, Shin Godzilla is a great Godzilla movie that will appeal to people who have acquired that particular taste. On the other hand, Godzilla Minus One is simply a great movie that I do not hesitate to recommend and even urge people without that acquired taste to see.

Director Takashi Yamazaki spoiled us with his magnificent story of Koichi Shikishima, the failed kamikaze pilot who takes in war orphans Noriko Oishi and the little girl Akiko. I don’t remember the names of the characters in Shin Godzilla, but in their defense, I think that’s part of the movie’s point.

Aldo and the compass plant

Two months after writing that I was finally going to read A Sand County Almanac, I have actually begun to do so.

Aldo Leopold writes about the demise of his area’s last compass plant. Perhaps the cutleaf Silphium has seen a resurgence since the book was published in 1949, and that’s why I was able to buy my first two a few years back, but in any case I see I am steward to a special patch of flora and need to keep encouraging it.

I kept an eye on those two plants, which I planted in our field surrounded only by soil and kept relatively weed-free for the first summer or two. I was disappointed in them for those first years — they had big, interesting leaves but nothing like the fireworks burst of their cup-plant cousins.

I think it was the third summer when one of them sent a stalk up over my head that soon was a bouquet of bright yellow flowers, and the other one followed suit the following year. And when I began to see compass leaves growing here and there where I had not planted them, I rejoiced. Yes, I think “rejoiced” is the right word.

I mentioned the emergence of my wildflower garden last week; it was when the compass stalks began to poke above the coneflowers that I realized the wildflower field is really becoming established.

Meanwhile, the hillside under the bedroom window is a mixture of flowers planted by Red and flowers that might be considered “weeds,” and the result is so wild and free that I wonder if I should let it be. As you may have noticed yesterday, some of those uninvited guests are delightful!

An August morning, just after sunrise

The flashes of blue and dawn’s sun against the clouds, and the birds flitting across the sky, and the warm summer breeze, fill me with an amazing calm, and I murmur, “Thank you, God,” the Master Artist, for the lovely painting full of life.

We need cold winter days, when the air is sharp and biting, to fully love the August days when “living is easy,” as the poet rightly described them.

We need the crippling pain of loss to fully love the moments we share with a companion on the journey.

I think of those dark days and relish the morning light all the more.