Shin Godzilla Orthochromatic

Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s 21st century masterpiece is reborn with this stunning black-and-white version, released in Japan last year in the leadup to Godzilla’s 70th anniversary. A major critical and commercial success that earned seven Japan Academy Prize awards, Shin Godzilla (2016) pays tribute to the monster movie franchise’s origins while reinventing the iconic kaiju within the context of Japan’s political present. Proposed by Anno and overseen by Higuchi, ORTHOchromatic adds new dimensions to the film’s visual impact by rendering it in orthochromatic (“ortho” for short) black-and-white, a type of monochrome characterized by starker contrasts and more pronounced blacks. The results are awe-inspiring and presents Shin Godzilla as never seen before.

Dir. Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi, 2023, 119 min., DCP, black and white, in Japanese with English subtitles. With Hiroki Hasegawa, Yutaka Takenouchi, Satomi Ishihara.