<\/p>\n
It is a particular treat to see a Hayao Miyazaki movie on Supposedly Miyazaki’s final film, The Wind Rises<\/em> is a workout for your eyes, but unfortunately, not Miyazaki In those sequences, which almost always take place on the wings of airplanes, he discusses design with his engineering For a movie made by someone with such mastery of visual narration, The Wind Rises<\/em> does an awful lot of Undercooked characters and unearned plot developments have never been Regardless, people take Miyazaki and this movie in As for the latter claim, Jiro skirts the issue mostly,
\nthe big screen, and the Japanese animator’s latest is no exception. The Wind Rises<\/em>
\nis as gorgeous as any Studio Ghibli production, crisp and pastel,
\nsoothing and stunning. Rife with dream sequences of impossibly layered aircraft
\nagainst perfect skies dolloped with clouds, Rises<\/em>
\nreaches the fantastical imaginative heights we’ve come to expect from Miyazki.
\nAnd when it isn’t wowing you with what you’ve never seen before, it’s wowing
\nyou with what you have. There’s so much pleasure to be taken from the tiny details
\nthat the big screen amplifies: the moths that flock around an outside lantern,
\nthe incandescent halo of the moon shining through translucent nighttime clouds,
\nthe wildly unnatural colors that sneak in and out of the sky during the final
\nmoments of daylight.<\/p>\n
\nyour brain. Instead of his usual delirious fantasy, plot haphazardly unspooling in more or less real time, Miyazaki’s delivered a
\nconventional (though highly fictionalized) biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, the man
\nresponsible for designing several of Japan’s World War II fighter planes. <\/p>\n
\nhas called Horikoshi "the most gifted man of his time in Japan." Maybe he finds this to be self-evident, because there is scant proof in the movie. Sure, we see Jiro advancing in his
\ncareer and working up to the point of being appointed chief designer of a Navy
\ncompetition, but we don’t know why, other than his ability to
\nfind inspiration in a mackerel bone whose curve he deems "beautiful"
\nand his wild dreams. <\/p>\n
\ninspiration, Giovanni Battista Caproni. Caproni mentors him with whimsical
\nwisdom: "Airplanes are beautiful dreams." " Inspiration unlocks
\nthe future. Technology eventually catches up." "Artists are only
\ncreative for 10 years. We engineers are no different." (Is the last a
\ncomment on Miyazki’s own 60-year well drying up?)<\/p>\n
\ntelling. When Jiro reunites a girl (and her maid) with her family during the Great
\nKanto Earthquake of 1923, someone observes in response, "What a great
\nguy!" When he proposes a plane design much later in life to his rapt team
\nand jokes that it could be made lighter by leaving the weaponry off (to their
\ngreat amusement), a superior notes, "This is delightful." His
\ncourtship with Naoko, the girl he aided during the earthquake whom he meets
\nagain later in life while on vacation, begins when they meet by a spring. ("Please don’t go. I was giving thanks to this spring. I
\nasked it to bring you here. I asked it to bring you to me," she tells him.) It then consists of walking with her in a
\ndownpour and then tossing some paper airplanes at her hotel room from his
\nbalcony. Soon after, he tells her father, "I love her very much."<\/p>\n
\nmuch of a problem in Miyazaki’s work (though they’re perhaps more present than
\nmost of his fans would like to admit) because his movies are generally insane, and they’re cartoons, anyway. Who needs conventional narrative building blocks
\nwhen Miyazaki is offering you a fortress of imagination? But The Wind Rises<\/em> is different\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit’s conventional in structure, as a character study, a Bildungsroman<\/em>, a romance. At
\nhis most realistic, Miyazki is hardest to swallow.<\/p>\n
\nparticular very seriously. He’s been criticized<\/a> both for
\nvenerating an engineer of death machines, and for having that
\ndeath-machine engineer express a less than enthusiastic attitude about the war
\nhe’s helping facilitate. I came away believing that the former argument is
\nstronger (moments like the "What a great guy!" one seem defensive if
\nnot propagandist). <\/p>\n
\nfocusing on his work and not its implications, most likely inspired by
\nCabroni’s early assertion that, "Airplanes are not for war. They’re not
\ntools for making money." Late in the movie, his colleague Honjo
\nrationalizes their role: "We’re not arms merchants. We just want to design
\ngood aircraft." Jiro replies, "That’s right." What a bold stance. <\/p>\n