The Great War of Archimedes (2019) makes an argument for how real life works
In 2018, I was at the Edo-Tokyo Museum.
Inside, there’s a map of Tokyo with buttons beneath. Each represents a moment in the war and together, they form a timeline. As you press the buttons one by one, the map lights up in great red circles, showing the extent of the firebombing they suffered and the death toll piling up.
By the time you’re done, all of Tokyo is red.
Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, The Great War of Archimedes is the film whose success lead to the frankly amazing Lupin III: The First and eventually the juggernaut Godzilla Minus One.
In the first minutes of the opening, the Japanese navy onboard the battleship Yamato is struggling. Yamato's guns fire, but do not hit. The swarm of enemy fighters are unending. The camera zooms in on the blue star and stripe on the fuselage. Americans. Bomb after bomb, torpedo after torpedo slams into Yamato's hull. She pukes black smoke. She chokes and her crew burst in an act that expunges blood, flesh, and bone.
Finally, Yamato scores a victory. The proud flagship, the pride of Japan itself, shoots down an American bomber. But the men's cheers do not last. A close shot lingers on the shock and devastation in their eyes. The Americans have ejector seats and parachutes. Dedicated seaplanes swoop in to pick up their valiant; a wakeup call for the Japanese navy and their country's utter disregard for the value of their lives.
Yamato is outgunned and outmatched. Her deck is awash with blood and chunks of flesh. Dismembered fingers tumble over scrubbed wood.
She sinks soon after.
In the immediate scene, a flashback to twelve years before, old men argue over how to spend a military budget that represents a staggering 40% of the nation’s money. Outside, countrymen starve. But tradition wins. The General leers and essentially masturbates over a scale model of the battleship Yamato. Logic sways him not; only repressed shame; only ego and pride.
It is hard not to see the General as Japan. Allow me to go further. He is representative of any of our countries’ politics.
The General wins. We watch him do it. Not just on the screen, but every day on our phones, on TV, reflected not just in our dreaded morning commutes, but our infrastructure and healthcare and personal connections.
It always seems like when our countries win, we lose.
That’s this movie, by the way.
It's a drama about everything happening now. Anyone with any sense can see the insanity of Gaza, AI, climate change, the anti-woke movement, and yet executives and politicians and white supremacists charge full steam ahead. Reality doesn’t matter.
The main character, Tadashi Kai, tells the Admiral that Japan cannot win a war against the US. Numbers don’t lie. The Admiral responds that the higher-ups are blinded in their belief. They have thrown all their hopes into Yamato and deluded themselves into thinking a single ship will lead them to victory. There’s nothing more important than its completion. All sacrifices will be worth it.
It is an echo of everything we hear. Have we forgotten the hordes shouting that if we just believed in Bitcoin enough, it’ll replace our everyday currency? They insist its failure was our fault.
And yet, Yamato is useless. Her cannons have a less than 1% hit-rate in battle. Like everything else posited, she is a belief, a blackhole of lives and money even before she set sail, sold piecemeal as contracts to private companies as they fuse themselves into this bloated corpse rebranded as national pride and a symbol of the future. In the moment, it’s hard to accept that this kind of brazen corruption can even be real. Yet, grab any article on AI or the military-industrial complex and you’ll see the embezzlement and lies reach even deeper.
If Gaza and Cop City and Boeing are real, why can't this be?
And then there's love.
War movies eventually breach this topic at some point, past the constant hammering of the message that 'war is bad'. Tadashi is coded autistic. It’s a great way for the script to shirk social norms. Whereas his lieutenant valet acts the foil and constantly walks and talks the way of a navy man, Tadashi lets impulse and love drive every one of his actions.
No rules. No preconceptions. You won’t know until you try. And by god, does Tadashi try, even when his enemies fight dirty. Fortified by their love of money, their attacks are cruel, their tactics underhanded, their defenses impenetrable, but Tadashi still tries and finds a way. It’s admirable, even when the other admirals don’t see it that way. The movie does not shy away in portraying this as beauty, especially in a world that considers neurodivergence a deficiency and an annoyance; acceptance exists only when it can be exploited, and while Tadashi is exploited, I still found the script's portrayal of him as tender and loving.
The climactic battle is a demonstration of that beauty itself. Even with the tragedy that ensues.
We knew this from the beginning: Yamato is built, the war happens, millions are lost. The country has decided from the beginning that without its existence there are no citizens and thus, the citizens do not matter. No tax on their blood is too much to ask.
It’s reminiscent of the time I went to Google Headquarters. I left this part out when I wrote that piece because I knew my own folly before I acted upon it. Near the end, I spoke to those at the table. I confronted them on the nature of Google and what they did. I asked them for their thoughts, how they could continue knowing the exploitation, data theft, and the reality of their defense contracts; how could any part of their work be justifiable on the matter of ethics?
What was wrong with earning...I don't know, a few million less, but being a little bit more ethical about it?
Like you’d expect, they laughed at me. The lawyer at the table shook his head. Another woman glared at me, disgusted, before disappointment settled in.
“You just don’t get how real life works, do you?”
Thus spoke the villains in this movie.
There's a lot still to this movie that I'd like you to discover for yourself. There's caution and even an argument for 'reality' that I find quite meek and defeatist, especially given the existence of Yamato's sister ship Musashi. It tries to end on a beautiful note, perhaps to force some introspection into the nature of Japanese pride, but my thoughts failed to linger there.
Rather, I keep thinking back to the pivotal moment in the movie where Tadashi’s love interest arrives. Her presence is the breakthrough; he grabs her hands, bows his head, and tells her that “[she] is worth a million reinforcements.”
That’s how I feel about everyone these days. That’s the kindness I'd like us to take away.
Fight, I think. If not that, then love. All of it will matter in the end.
How could it not, when I have been saved so many times in the past year by these very acts of kindness and love?
