TWENTY DAYS ON: THE LASTING IMPACT OF GODZILLA VS. KONG

I do not think for a moment that the original Gojira 1954 was a movie about a man in a rubber suit. I do not think for a moment that Godzilla vs. Kong was about a fight among three titans. There is a through line shared by both movies. Each was an examination of the state of humanity and both in some significant way found our experience lacking but not beyond hope. 

Hope is the most precious gift of all. It was the last thing in Pandora's box. It is the last thing onto which we hold in life and in far too many instances in the experiences we encounter while living. From beginning to end, we are faced with a series of challenges, some far greater and seemingly insurmountable than others. 

In 1954, Japan, the only nation on earth to ever experience the immediate results of atomic weapons fired in anger, was scant months from a tragedy of a somewhat different kind. Castle Bravo, a nuclear test, produced far more power and fallout than had been anticipated. As a result, the men onboard the fishing trawler, Daigo Fukuryu Maru (the Lucky Dragon Five), were exposed to radiation sickness. One died. 

It is this mishap that is remembered in the opening of the Japanese movie of the film and two years later recalled as the first encounter between humanity and Gojira when men on board a fishing boat are confronted by a sudden flash followed by their vessel bursting into flame and sinking. It is not, as was long supposed, an immediate reference to either Hiroshima or Nagasaki although both were remembered throughout the film. 

While the long ago moments of those two blasts resulted from a lengthy, complicated and sorrowful conflict between and among nations, what the film expressed to us all was the danger such power poses to all of us. It was our shared humanity in the balance and that little film was there to serve as a reminder. It was certainly not reducible to drive-in movie fare. The message was brought into complete focus by a group of children singing a hymn that to this day never fails to stir my heart. 

For me, this movie's greatest moment is when bound in chains, angry and afraid, Kong reaches down to outstretch his finger to Jia, an expression as significant in art as any including the image of God's outstretched hand toward Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. That one so big could reach out to one so small and both share a common bond is a palpable expression of hope for humanity teetering on the verge once again of other conflicts and the senseless disregard we express toward Nature including one another. This, to me, was a profoundly spiritual moment, a rarity in any genre of film. 

It was also a deeply personal moment to me. This Kong is old, beaten and worn. His better days are clearly behind him; and the bond he shares with Jia is in no wise dissimilar from that which I share with my daughter whom I call, Boo. Those who are so small look up to us as if we are limitless fonts of power and wisdom, but how often do we, who are grown, depend upon the love and support of an innocent? The world should be a place where we all appreciate each other just a little more. 

There are debates and discussions about who won and who lost, but I would say Kong won not because Gojira lost, but because he got to go home and home was where his loved ones were.