10s Movie Review - The Wind Rises

Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Genre: Animation/ Drama/ Romance
Runtime: 126 minutes
Year: 2013
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, John Krasinski, Mandy Patinkin, Martin Short, William H. Macy, Werner Herzog, Mae Whitman, Jennifer Grey

Description: A look at the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the man who designer Japanese fighter planes during World War II.

 
Review: Director Hayao Miyazaki based his last full-length film on a true story that seems strange at first glance. The Japanese filmmaker is famous and loved for his imaginative and fairytale style, shot with so much detail and feeling that strange worlds seem completely logical and familiar. “The Wind Rises” based on the life of aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi, is something else entirely in that regard. The story in the film unfolds more like a conventional drama. And yet again Miyazaki again managed to touch deeply with it.
This is in no small part because everything is again made with visible love. Even in a fairly straightforward and realistic story Miyazakis creativity is still evident. In the beautifully drawn images of course, and sometimes in smaller things: how airplane engines, earthquakes and explosions sound organic and almost human for example.
Despite such playful inventions, “The Wind Rises”is mostly melancholy in tone. The story is set in the difficult years in which Japan had to contend with, among other things, a great depression, a tubercoloses epidemic and World War II that was about to erupt. In the midst of this misery we find protagonist Jiro Horikoshi, a man who has been fascinated by airplanes since childhood. When he learns that he will never get to fly because of his bad eyes, he sets on designing them. Miyazaki makes the fierce ambition synchronize with Jiros love life. Both are full of passion, but also seem headed for destruction.
Jiros fate takes wry turns. For example, when he comes up with the idea of removing machine guns from planes to make them lighter, this implicitly gives birth to the idea of using the planes for kamikaze pilots in war. that must be about the opposite of how a designer wants to see his work used. But that is of secondary importance, Miyazaki wants to tell us. What you can’t influence, you have to be able to let go of. What life is about is the pursuit of personal goals and loves.
Perhaps that is also the though of a filmmaker who looks back on his career and with this film leaves an encouraging message for the coming generations of animators and directors at the renowned Studio Ghibli. As a farewell film, “The Wind Rises” may not be directly indicative of Miyazaki’s oeuvre, but it does illustrate his powerful vision and loving work ethic.

Rating: 4,5/ 5