‘Godzilla’ focuses on human drama

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In Japanese film ‘Sea’, guilt leads to revenge

TOKYO, Oct 31, (Agencies): Godzilla is stomping back into theaters as a fire-breathing animated character, though the movie chosen to close this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival is more focused on human drama than the monsters that have made the franchise famous.

The two directors of “Godzilla: The Planet Eater” acknowledge that their film is so different it might turn off hard-core fans. But they say that’s an intentional attempt to reach out to new audiences.

“We welcome getting bashed by the traditionalists,” Hiroyuki Seshita, one of the directors, told The Associated Press last week. “That proves more than anything we succeeded in creating something different.”

A mutation caused by nuclear testing, the first Godzilla emerged from the ocean in a 1954 film directed by Ishiro Honda. Godzilla flattened much of Tokyo as crowds fled in terror, and went on to become an eternal symbol of human fallacy in the atomic age.

The latest film completes a three-part animated saga that began last year. It premiers Nov 3, Godzilla’s official birthday, the date the first film was released.

Seshita and co-director Kobun Shizuno said that rather than simply transferring the well-known tale into a computer animation, they have focused on what they call Shakespearean “human drama.” They tackle complex issues, including the meaning of religion, in a futuristic post-apocalyptic universe.

While Godzilla still has its screech and menacingly gigantic shape, it hardly engages in battles with other monsters, a trademark of the mega-series from Toho Co.

“We kept all that is Godzilla-like – its design and how it’s portrayed on film. We have kept its essence,” said Seshita, who has served as art director of the “Final Fantasy” movies.

Although some viewers may find the story rather complicated, Seshita said the film chose to interpret the Godzilla saga as what he called “a kind of animism,” or a godlike force that is bigger than human existence, a perspective he said was integral to Japanese culture and storytelling.

The hero is a doe-eyed, rock-star-like Japanese man who is selflessly determined to reclaim planet Earth, which has been left in shambles from Godzilla’s havoc.

Humans have been relegated to wandering around in space, surviving in a gigantic spaceship that’s factory-like and sterile, unlike the lush greenness that was once home.

Enjoyable

“I’m not a Godzilla expert and so I simply made a film I thought would be enjoyable,” said Shizuno, who has also directed the “G.I. Joe: Sigma 6” and “Detective Conan” animation series.

Yet the film is scattered with tributes to Godzilla, according to the directors, who declined to disclose too many specifics. For one, the hero’s name is Haruo, the same as the actor Haruo Nakajima, who was inside the rubber Godzilla suit in the original 1954 film. Nakajima died last year.

Toho has made 29 Godzilla films, not counting the animation trilogy. The last work, released in 2016, used an actor skilled in traditional Japanese theater known as Kyogen, whose movements were interpreted into computer graphics that brought a terrifying Godzilla to life.

There are two Hollywood Godzilla films, the most recent in 2014. A third is promised for next year.

Ryota Fujitsu, an expert on Japanese animation, said the animated trilogy was commendable for its visual beauty, as well as for tackling Godzilla as a science fiction movie.

“So much has been tried in the long-running series that taking a new approach was inevitable,” he said, noting the work explores the dilemma between civilization and the individual. “This work is facing the Godzilla theme head-on.”

The first two films of the animated trilogy are available on Netflix.

Also:

TOKYO: A young man suffers years of anguish after failing to stop the rape of a school girl in “Sea”, a gritty film of revenge and redemption by new Japanese director Kensei Takahashi.

“Sea” comes at a time of heightened awareness of sexual assault thanks to the #MeToo movement, although Takahashi said he had already begun developing the film before the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke last year.

Takahashi had originally envisaged a thriller-style film with the girl as the main character but decided on a male lead whose perspective he could better understand, which he said helped him to deepen the story and address themes like abandonment.

“The thing I wanted to say most is that people are very indifferent about things that are happening to other people,” Takahashi told a question-and-answer session after the film’s premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival, which runs until Saturday.

“Sea” follows Hiroshi (Satoshi Abe), a shy high-school student hoping to get into university, and get away from his dreary coastal hometown where he is bullied by the likes of Tatsuya (Seiya Okada) and Kengo (Seijyuro Mimori).

One day, life is irrevocably changed when he discovers Rie (Arisa Sato) being sexually assaulted by Tatsuya and Kengo in a boat shed on the beach but is powerless to stop them. The crime is never reported and Rie quietly leaves town.

Hiroshi retreats into a shell of guilt, toiling as a newspaper delivery person and avoiding contact with others. But a class reunion for 20-year-olds provides a chance encounter with the rapists – and an opportunity for vengeance.

Takahashi made “Sea” as his university graduation film but is already competing against established filmmakers in the festival’s Splash section for Japanese independent film, highlighting the director’s potential.

“They say you’re ‘new’ until your second film and that the second one is really important. So I want mine to be symbolic of me and hope to get into next year’s main competition section,” he said. (RTRS)

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