I went to see Shin Godzilla with my friend Annabel last night. It has been about 2 years since my last Godzilla movie and many more years since my last Japanese Godzilla movie. I had stopped after Destroyah, I could not bear seeing Godzilla die.

The writer/directors of this movie (Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi) also wrote and directed Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is a famous anime. I had seen NGE and admired its ability to challenge traditional narrative storylines. It had the veneer of a children’s anime, but depicts characters in different forms of depression. It also has a super-famous ending that makes no sense.

Anyway, it is rare that a franchise movie like this one would get an opinionated and stylistic director like Anno. It is a hybrid of a popcorn summer flick and a thoughtful, message-delivering independent film. Oh yes, this movie has some pretty pointed messages. And yes it has Godzilla.

The original Godzilla is a metaphor for the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This one continues the nuclear theme, but references Fukushima. Godzilla sheds the personality that we saw from the Godzilla flicks of 70s to 90s (with the notable exception of Godzilla 1985) and once again becomes an inscrutable force of nature. His actions cannot be interpreted. He just does what he wants - undeterred by anything the government does to him.

The movie takes us into the levels of government, following along as people react to the emergence of Godzilla. After a bungled slow first response, the government forms a task force that would react forcefully against him. Eventually they come up with a plan that would beat him and mobilize against him. I am not going to lie - this plan brings up some serious shades of Fukushima.

I love Anno’s camera style. His head-on closeups of characters’ faces as they say their lines with weary emotion and solemn force remind me of Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner: “I like to fill up the frame with the characters’ faces. There’s nothing more interesting than the landscape of the human face.”

Anno somehow makes shots of rooms full of government officials super interesting. He takes full advantage of the cinematic screen - the camera would be focused on a single person in a crowded when suddenly a commotion would start off at the side of the screen, away from focus. The guy turns to watch as the commotion moves from where it started to behind him and then into the center. It’s beautiful - a visual metaphor of how the human brain works. Something happens away from our focus and it slowly moves into our view.

Anno’s are anime-esque, vast and empty of decoration. They are huge - more like convention rooms with massive screens mounted on the walls. And the camera moves. It moves with its characters as they walk about, it is picked up by people as they look at screens, it rises way above a dance-like commotion of people. As much as I love scenes of Godzilla fighting tanks, there is something mesmerizing about these simple scenes of men and women reacting to something they have never seen before in their lives.

Shin Godzilla is not your ordinary Godzilla movie. It is an auteur movie, and worth watching. Please do.