So, my immediate reaction is “Go see this film. It’s only getting a limited release in the US, but this deserves all the support it can get.” Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film this good in a theater (that wasn’t a re-release or special showing).

I’m trying to make a rule not to make a final judgment right after seeing something, since thinking it over and seeing it again often changes things, but initial reaction is that this was an incredible film; easily one of the best of the series. Pretty close to exactly what I would want out of a serious Godzilla film and then some.

This is basically Toho taking their signature character and saying “Let’s just show you what we can do with him besides making him a kaiju superhero.” In this case it’s explore the trauma, disillusion, and fitful struggle to survive of post-war Japan while criticizing the inclination to suicide.

At the same time they give a pitch-perfect origin story for Godzilla, working several disparate elements of the lore into what I would consider his ideal backstory. The respect for the series they’re building on is through the roof, but never heavy-handed or out of place. Oh, and that moment when we finally see him on land in broad daylight while that gorgeously somber Ifukube score kicks in is nothing short of cinematic bliss (I noticed a lot of classic Godzilla music in the film, including what I think was one of Kong’s themes from King Kong vs. Godzilla). And his attack on Tokyo, though arguable too short, has him showing exactly the kind of ferocity and rage that we would want to see from him. In other scenes he’s a little more lumbering than I would like, but that’s hardly unsuitable for the character.

And the human characters are actually gripping in their own right, and they act like people! Real, mature, honest-to-goodness human beings! That’s remarkably rare in modern films.

For instance, when the main character – a failed kamikaze pilot – returns home to find his Tokyo neighborhood a smouldering ruin, his neighbor lays into him for coming back alive, blaming him for the loss of the war and the deaths of her family (“If you’d done your job this wouldn’t have happened and my children would be alive!”), and overall coming across, from our perspective, as rather hateful. But then, when he inadvertently adopts a young woman and child (the child isn’t hers), she can’t resist intervening to help them look after it. By the time we cut to a couple year’s later, they’re on good terms and she’s a major supporting character. That’s the kind of thing I mean; recognizing that a grieving mother lashing out and saying the most hurtful things she can at the nearest suitable target doesn’t make her a bad person. She needs someone to blame to make sense of the disaster, and he’s the closest person with any degree of responsibility.

Our protagonist is an interesting character as well, haunted by his failures (which also include an encounter with a pre-atom-bomb Godzilla that leaves him and one other man the sole survivors of their garrison) and unable to move on from the war, to the point of suffering periodic mental breakdowns where he believes himself to be dead (the acting’s really good too, by the way). His inability to move on manifests in his never being able to marry the young woman or accept his role as the child’s father, despite them forming a family in all-but-name.

Then there’s the friends he makes in a mine-sweeping job, who again manage the difficult feat of coming across as normal men; two of them ex-service, one of whom missed the war due to being too young and feels it to be a lack in himself. They’re not the standard quirky eccentrics you usually get, but they’re not cardboard either; they’re, again, ordinary people and come across as such.

Which is something of a theme in the film; ordinary people caught up in an overwhelming situation they have very little control over, suffering from the bad decisions of a myopic government and world powers that don’t care about them, and trying to find a way to fix the problem themselves.

Their plan to defeat Godzilla is an interesting one, hinging on different scientific principles (while also making visual allusions to the Oxygen Destroyer). And I love how the guy who comes up with it repeatedly has to admit that, no, he can’t guarantee it’ll work, because one, they’re dealing with something no one’s seen before, and two, he’s only human.

Besides which, the picture of post-war Japan is fascinating in itself; something we Americans often lose sight of. The crowded, chaotic streets lined with rubble, the burned-down neighborhoods, the struggle to simply find food and shelter, then to find work, and the slow picking up and pulling together.

I’m a huge Godzilla fan, so I’m going to go see a Godzilla movie. But this one isn’t just a chance to watch one of my favorite characters in action again: this was a genuine drama that hooked me right away and kept me invested from beginning to end because I genuinely wanted to see what would happen to the characters. Godzilla himself fits in as the living embodiment of the brutal, hopeless war, returned to prey upon the peace. Which is a good role for him; as something that you can’t simply put down, but which either must be simply endured or else requires a special, unique effort to destroy.