Ishirō Honda makes a frightening monster film whose destruction hurts, helped by careful model-work and Akira Ifukube’s mournful score. The human exchanges can be stiff, but the fear and grief give them weight.
Godzilla is a forceful, upsetting monster film, with a stiffness in some of its human exchanges that is worth forgiving. Ishirō Honda takes nuclear fear seriously enough to let it govern the entertainment. The creature supplies the danger, but the film keeps asking what people have made possible through science and what they can bear to do about it. At 96 minutes, it has room for politics, romance and conscience without losing sight of the threat.
Satoru Chūko and Takeo Kita’s production design gives the miniature buildings enough solidity and detail to make their destruction unpleasant. We were surprised by how much we minded watching them come apart. The model-work encourages us to imagine a populated city, and the attention to human suffering keeps those imagined inhabitants in mind. There is pleasure in seeing practical effects so carefully worked out, though the destruction never feels arranged solely to reward our appetite for damage.
Masao Tamai’s cinematography makes effective use of darkness around the monster and the city. The buildings remain substantial enough to register as places, rather than a collection of objects waiting for their turn to fall over. Kazuji Taira’s editing keeps the damage connected to its human consequences, instead of letting the effects occupy a separate film. That connection matters more than speed: the destruction becomes increasingly distressing because we are made to consider what it does to people.
The performances sustain that seriousness. Takashi Shimura gives Kyohei Yamane a grave, attentive presence that makes the discussions worth listening to even when the writing slows them down. Akihiko Hirata’s Daisuke Serizawa makes the question of conscience feel painfully personal, which is important in a film carrying so much public anxiety. The actors do not apologise for the premise or offer reassuring amusement at its improbability, and their conviction helps the human scenes withstand the competition from the creature.
The less successful passages are those in which Takeo Murata and Ishirō Honda’s screenplay seems obliged to give every moral question its full hearing. We understand the need for the political discussion, but some of it feels laboured. The romance also asks for patience when the danger has already supplied a more urgent reason to care about these people. These are limitations in the handling of the drama, and the performances cannot entirely remove them.
Akira Ifukube’s score does much to keep the fear and sorrow together. Its force gives the monster weight, while its mournfulness prevents the destruction from becoming comfortable viewing. The music is emphatic, but it earns that emphasis because the film has made suffering central to what we see. It also helps sustain the tension when the dialogue becomes too deliberate and the human scenes need something beyond another carefully stated position.
For anyone accustomed to treating a monster as the main attraction, the emphasis on suffering may take some adjustment. There is little reason to ask this creature for a more interesting personality: its capacity for destruction is frightening enough, and the people supply the moral uncertainty. That makes this a more sombre evening than the miniature buildings might suggest. Allow for some stiff exchanges; the fear and grief are worth staying with.
