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A kidnapper wouldn't jump into a cold sea
Under very few circumstances while watching Ishirō Honda's Atragon (海底軍艦, 1963) does one have to hand it to Agent No. 23 of the Empire of Mu, the shoregoing operative of a barbarically advanced civilization gathering itself from the bed of the Pacific to reclaim its former colonies which in the millennia since its Atlantean sinking had the temerity to strike out on their own as the nations of Earth, but he is played by Akihiko Hirata in a gold-glint of dark glasses and an out-of-season scarf tucked against the chill of the surface world and when he is held at gunpoint with his back to the tide-line, he only smiles in the slightest of farewells before leaping into the day-for-night-blue surf without even taking off his shoes. "He escaped into the sea?" His introductory getaway was more technically audacious when he drove a stolen taxi straight off a quay, but if he were human he would look like a suicide and once he's in the water instead he rejoins his phosphorescently submerged comrades without so much as catching a bullet. In a high-concept blend of lost-world pulp and post-war politics, he's a wonderfully uncanny touch without special effects, which is not to deprecate the film's ingenious panoply of images from hydronauts in a looseleaf of silver scales to a dragon coiling like a moray from the side of an oceanic trench to the crimson-clouded detonation of a geothermal sun. The people of Mu run hotter than seals: the sea smokes like a geyser around them, a wrench turns red-hot in the agent's contemptuous grasp; one of his colleagues appears capable of generating an eellike stunning charge. "We have special energy. It's useless." Elsewhere their civilization resembles a sort of Egypto-Minoan fusion by way of Verne and Haggard, its laser cannons sheathed in the coils of bronze ceti and the blinkenlights of its enormous computer banks carved around in cyclopean bas-relief. The empress of Mu looks like a nascent anime design with her hood of clementine-colored hair and new wave eyes, a casual ransom of pearls collared over her brilliant draperies and finely ringed mail. Humanity's last, best hope if it can be repurposed from a dream of militaristic nationalism to the defense of global ideals, the Atragon-class submarine of the title suggests a garfish down to its countershading, a sleek leviathan of spy-fi industry artfully equipped with a few indistinguishably magical tricks of its own. When Mu calls in its marker on the land, the inevitable destruction of Tokyo is a one-two doozy of practical and animated effects—business districts jolted to flinders by a precisely triggered earthquake, container ships set ablaze by an enemy sub's lancing ray—but the eye candy doesn't crowd out the food for thought when the sunken empire makes such a successfully fantastical double for the imperial past that Japan must explicitly repudiate in order to inhabit its international future. I wouldn't kick any of it out of bed for eating seaweed crackers, especially not the first glimpse of the sea-dragon Manda, a thick shield-wall of scales, seemingly endless, breathing. I just remain enchanted with the liminal simplicity of Agent No. 23 in his anonymous dark suit, a Magritte figure whose very ordinariness makes him surreal. His voice will narrate a history of his empire from a spool of 8 mm and deliver its modern ultimatum on reel-to-reel. "Admiral, this earthquake isn't a coincidence. Remember me?" He'd be namelessly memorable even if I hadn't loved his actor since Dr. Serizawa. This sea brought to you by my special backers at Patreon.
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Thank you! It was totally new to me, too: I discovered a bushel of kaiju films on the Criterion Channel and watched this one and Dogora (宇宙大怪獣ドゴラ, 1964) on the strength of their descriptions, which in both cases they turned out to be much neater than. A+ Eiji Tsuburaya values, however, as advertised.
(Dogora features a carbon-eating space jellyfish which threatens all life on Earth but also interferes with the planned heists of a ring of diamond thieves. More science fiction films should contain heist movies. The combination is gold.)
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Thank you! Enjoy!
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Thank you!
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I went straight from this movie to rewatching Gojira for the first time since 2014. (Raving about it at any time makes sense to me.)
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So spoil me for the ending (you can encrypt it or send it by email if that's better): what with the destruction of Tokyo and all, am I to take it that the Mu empire wins?
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I watched it following a couple of enjoyable but much less aesthetically distinctive movies and I loved looking at it. I don't even know that it was all that big-budget. It just did such neat things with it. It's full of scenes that look in the most complimentary sense like three-dimensional illustrations from a pulp magazine. Occasionally two-dimensional. The absolute zero cannon freezes its targets into matte paintings.
So spoil me for the ending (you can encrypt it or send it by email if that's better): what with the destruction of Tokyo and all, am I to take it that the Mu empire wins?
[rot13] Gur Zh Rzcver qbrf abg jva! Gbxlb vf qrfgeblrq nf cebbs bs vgf cbjre, nf ner bgure pbnfgny pvgvrf gung jr bayl frr gur urnqyvarf bs—va n qvfznyyl ernyvfg gbhpu, gur HA jevgrf bss gur Zh gncrf nf n ubnk hagvy Ubat Xbat naq Iravpr naq Arj Lbex unir orra ynvq jnfgr naq gur anivrf naq pbzzrepvny syrrgf bs gur jbeyq funggrerq ol jrveq fpvrapr jnesner. Gur zbfg cbjreshy ngbzvp fhoznevar va gur fhesnpr jbeyq vf yherq gb pehfu qrcgu, zlfgrevbhfyl cnenylmrq naq vzcybqrq. Ahpyrne jrncbaf ner bss gur gnoyr sbe raivebazragny naq rguvpny ernfbaf nf jryy nf n erny dhrfgvba bs rssvpnpl. Fvapr gur Zh pnyyrq sbe vgf qrfgehpgvba nf cneg bs gurve hygvznghz, gur Ngentba cebwrpg ybbxf yvxr gur boivbhf snyyonpx sbe Rnegu'f qrsrafr, rkprcg gung gur shghevfgvp jne znpuvar vf pheeragyl va gur pbageby bs n aniny pbzznaqre jub snxrq uvf bja qrngu ng gur raq bs JJVV naq arire pbafragrq gb gur fheeraqre bs Vzcrevny Wncna, syrrvat vafgrnq jvgu uvf zra gb n erzbgr vfynaq va gur Cnpvsvp jurer ur unf fcrag gur lrnef fvapr ersvavat uvf fhcre-fhoznevar va beqre gb erfgber uvf pbhagel gb vgf evtugshy rzcver; vg vf abg gb or gnxra vagb onggyr sbe nal yrffre ernfba fhpu nf gur fnivat bs bgure angvbaf, rira jura gurl pbzcevfr gur jbeyq gung uvf qnhtugre orybatf gb. Uvf byq pbzznaqvat bssvpre znxrf vg n sbezny erdhrfg. Uvf qnhtugre pbzcnerf uvz jvgu ubeebe gb gur Zh. Gur lbhat wbheanyvfg fur ybirf qrabhaprf cngevbgvfz nf ehfgrq nezbe. Vg fgvyy gnxrf uvz nyzbfg cnfg gur ynfg zvahgr gb yrg tb bs uvf qernz bs n eranfprag Rzcver bs Wncna, gur tubfg-zveebe bs Zh juvpu qebjarq gjryir gubhfnaq lrnef ntb naq fgvyy vafvfgf ba vgf evtugf gb gur angvbaf gung znqr n arj jbeyq sbe gurzfryirf va vgf jnxr. Gur npghny raqvat vf na rkgenbeqvanel rssrpg bs furrgf bs fxl-oybggvat pevzfba sver perngrq ol gur gevpx cubgbtencul bs jngre naq qlr, n synzzntravghf znryfgebz vagb juvpu gur Rzcerff bs Zh jubfr unve vf nyzbfg rknpgyl vgf ncbpnylcgvp funqr fjvzf bhg qryvorengryl gb zrrg gur qbbz bs ure crbcyr va n trfgher gung Pncgnva Wvathwv erpbtavmrf naq erfcrpgf sebz uvf jnegvzr qnlf rira abj gung ur unf tebja cnfg gurz uvzfrys. Vg'f fbzore naq vzcerffvir naq pybfr gb ubzr. Rira xabjvat gung Gbub pbhyq raq vgf zbafgre zbivrf ba gur qbjaorng, vg fgvyy znqr zr abgvpr. Naq vg ybbxf snagnfgvp guebhtubhg.
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I need to watch this when I get home. Looks like it's available on Tubi...
ETA: Or I see you pointing to Internet Archive in the next post--excellent!
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Everyone with their own voices!
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It's a bit crunchy, but it's subtitled on the Internet Archive. (Then I can ask you to write for the Mu.)
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I'll take them over Armageddon (1998) any day!
(I am unironically enjoying the availability of tokusatsu on the Criterion Channel.)
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I didn't see it until adulthood, when I loved it instantly. It's in the category of films I love so much I have never even written poems about them. Fortunately I have friends who have.
I have placed Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster on my list. With a three-headed dragon I don't see how I can lose.
Away from the monsters, I enjoyed Battle in Outer Space but was utterly captivated by First Spaceship on Venus. To a precocious kid in the rural South in the early 1970s, that is a foreign film!
I saw that under its original title of The Silent Star! What a cool thing to have in your head from early on.
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When I said it reminded me of The Mysterious Cities of Gold (1982–83), I didn't even make the connection that the lost civilization in that series is the Empire of Mu! I wonder if it's a more common referent in Japan due to the Pacific location or if there's an actual line of influence.
Atragon
What struck me the most was how willing Honda was to bet that the elements he found interesting--from miniature work to dancing to fish scale diving suits to thematic concerns, would be of interest to his audience.
Compared to a modern genre film, it felt interestingly de-protagonized, not merely in that the sense that Honda likes ensembles, but in these sense that I'm fairly certain if this story was made in contemporary Hollywood, the captain would have a pro forma "character arc" with "emotional" story beats leading him on a hero's journey to save a cat, or some such. As opposed to merely saying "no, why would I save the world" to his mentor and daughter, and then later, almost, if not entirely, arbitrarily agreeing to go deal with Mu.
I'm oversimplifying. Certainly, in context it's telling that he is the one who says "Let her die with her nation" There is some character work here. But it doesn't feel as centered and formulaic as in a modern flick.
Re: Atragon
I'm so glad! Thanks for coming back to let me know.
What struck me the most was how willing Honda was to bet that the elements he found interesting--from miniature work to dancing to fish scale diving suits to thematic concerns, would be of interest to his audience.
As an audience member who likes both miniatures and interrogations of national mythos, I felt catered to.
Certainly, in context it's telling that he is the one who says "Let her die with her nation" There is some character work here. But it doesn't feel as centered and formulaic as in a modern flick.
I appreciate you pointing it out because the film works so well in its more collective form, the absence of conventional beats had actually not registered with me. I did like the callback of the line about rusty armor which the retired rear admiral does not recognize because he wasn't there for the conversation.