Gojira -- a jumbo fire-breathing monster -- is set loose by an atomic bomb and does a terrifying number on Tokyo before being driven off by Mitsubishi Zeros, I mean American-built F-86 Sabres. A scientist has the device that will destroy the monster but is reluctant to use it because the device could be weaponized. He uses it anyway, at the willing cost of his own life.
I kept trying to compare this original Japanese version with the export version made for the American market, the one with a somber Raymond Burr describing the destruction. It wasn't easy because I hadn't seen the Burr version for years.
The isomorph we've been exposed to is almost funny. Burr is wide-eyed and awed. The monster is a man in a ridiculous rubber suit. The visual effects are based on models and give away their true size because of their texture. A rocket hitting Tokyo Bay sends up splashes with drops as big as basketballs.
Yet, though the skeleton of the story and its associated effects are the same, this is a far more serious story. There's nothing much laughable about it. There are extended scenes of the suffering of Tokyo's residents after the raid by Gojira. The hospitals are jammed. Babies wail. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what memories, only nine years old, were being redintegrated in the collective consciousness of the Japanese viewers. (Kids, we dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, three days apart, at the end of World War II. PS: That would be 1945.) The movie is deliberately invested with moral weight. The scientist who destroys Gojira kills himself so that the secret of his device will never be revealed and used in war. He's already destroyed his notes, but the knowledge is inside his head.
That spirit of self sacrifice is built into Japanese culture and I have no idea whether it's easy or not for most Westerners to grasp that and other subtleties. It's a matter of national character. And not just something as simple as young ladies hiding their giggles behind their hands. When the scientist tells his assistant never to reveal the existence of the secret oxygen destroyer, she promises. Later, when she breaks her promise, she and the man to whom she revealed the secret hang their heads in shame before the scientist and beg his forgiveness. The device may save the world, but they're still ashamed because they've broken a moral code. When I was in the service, a colleague told me wonderingly about his leaving a Japanese cat house and being chased down the street by one of the staff who wanted to return the wallet he'd left behind.
Well -- so much for cultural relativity. In case we might overlook the fact that this story is really about something other than a destructive monster who is a man in a rubber suit, one of the scientists launches into an obiter dictum about how much he hopes no more nuclear bombs will be exploded so they can avoid more Gojiras.
It's a sobering movie.
I kept trying to compare this original Japanese version with the export version made for the American market, the one with a somber Raymond Burr describing the destruction. It wasn't easy because I hadn't seen the Burr version for years.
The isomorph we've been exposed to is almost funny. Burr is wide-eyed and awed. The monster is a man in a ridiculous rubber suit. The visual effects are based on models and give away their true size because of their texture. A rocket hitting Tokyo Bay sends up splashes with drops as big as basketballs.
Yet, though the skeleton of the story and its associated effects are the same, this is a far more serious story. There's nothing much laughable about it. There are extended scenes of the suffering of Tokyo's residents after the raid by Gojira. The hospitals are jammed. Babies wail. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what memories, only nine years old, were being redintegrated in the collective consciousness of the Japanese viewers. (Kids, we dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, three days apart, at the end of World War II. PS: That would be 1945.) The movie is deliberately invested with moral weight. The scientist who destroys Gojira kills himself so that the secret of his device will never be revealed and used in war. He's already destroyed his notes, but the knowledge is inside his head.
That spirit of self sacrifice is built into Japanese culture and I have no idea whether it's easy or not for most Westerners to grasp that and other subtleties. It's a matter of national character. And not just something as simple as young ladies hiding their giggles behind their hands. When the scientist tells his assistant never to reveal the existence of the secret oxygen destroyer, she promises. Later, when she breaks her promise, she and the man to whom she revealed the secret hang their heads in shame before the scientist and beg his forgiveness. The device may save the world, but they're still ashamed because they've broken a moral code. When I was in the service, a colleague told me wonderingly about his leaving a Japanese cat house and being chased down the street by one of the staff who wanted to return the wallet he'd left behind.
Well -- so much for cultural relativity. In case we might overlook the fact that this story is really about something other than a destructive monster who is a man in a rubber suit, one of the scientists launches into an obiter dictum about how much he hopes no more nuclear bombs will be exploded so they can avoid more Gojiras.
It's a sobering movie.