(This is Monday’s MotD, but I’m posting it early because it’s time sensitive.)
I went to see Godzilla Minus One Minus Color last night, thinking it would be a neat alternate version of a film that is a clear critical and audience darling internationally. On Rotten Tomatoes GMO currently has a 98% rating from both critics and audiences, which is an astounding score.
Godzilla Minus One is magnificent. Godzilla Minus One Minus Color is better. It’s not a mere alternate take. It feels like an entirely different film, and more than that, a superior one.
First, the black and white is predictably gorgeous. The movie reminded me of how much I love black and white movies, and how incredibly beautiful they look up on a big screen. (And the theater I saw it had the movie on their very biggest screen.) This isn’t merely a version where they just turned off the colors. They went back and painstakingly relit each and every frame to make it look like a film that was actually shot in black and white, replicating an entirely different cinematography appropriate to a black and white movie.
More than that, it fully plays into one of the true paradoxes of film (and still photography); Black and white photography, despite presenting an obvious layer of artifice, somehow seems to capture a truer authenticity than color photography. The film’s Godzilla is even more terrifying in black and white, it’s true. More that though that, the utterly captivating human story that is the film’s bedrock itself seems truer somehow. It’s that ‘documentary’ feeling that you get from black and white, despite the fact that few under the age of probably 40 has ever seen a black and white documentary. Still, this verisimilitude triumphantly asserts itself, especially during the scenes early on as we watch both Tokyo and our main characters rebuild themselves from the destruction of war.
Meanwhile, on a just plain enjoyment level, the film plays like the greatest ‘50s black and white giant monster movie ever made. All the neat little quotes from the first film; the radio broadcasting crew shrilly reporting on Godzilla’s destruction before plunging to their deaths, Godzilla biting into the train, its car dangling from his mouth like link sausages, the scientist presenting a bubbling experiment in a large glass water tank, and so many more, echo the first film even more truly now that it shares the original Gojira’s stark black and white imagery.
And needless to say, when they finally kick in with Akira Ifukube’s classic Godzilla theme, it plays even better against a black and white Godzilla. Indeed, probably the only thing about the movie I would have changed would have been to include Ifukube’s nearly as iconic and stirring Military March as the armada against him sets out to sea.
However, while that would have been a wonderful fan moment, I also must admit it would have betrayed one of the film’s core themes. Despite one desperate attempt I saw trying to ‘dunk on the chuds’ because they loved GMO so much, wherein the author snidely informed readers that those stupid alt-righters were simply too stupid to realize the film is virulently anti-American [a) it isn’t, and b) so what is it was?], the fact is that this is thematically probably the Godzilla film most in tune with one of America’s core values: You can’t, in fact, you shouldn’t always rely on the Government. When you can’t, the citizens should take control directly and solve problems themselves. The people are the strength of any great country, not the government.
Even some of the CGI elements that weren’t entirely successful in the color version, such as the armada of ships at the end, look a lot better in black and white. The black and white cinematography covers most of the slight cartoonishness they present in the color version.
Godzilla Minus One Minus Color is due to play for only one week, which started last night. I doubt I’ve convinced anyone who just isn’t interested in this version to go see it in theaters. However, to anyone who was on the fence about about, I exhort you to hie yourselves to your local cinema to see the film that will quite possibly remain the finest release of 2024.
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