[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imtdgdGOB6Q]
The Wind Rises
Release Date: 02/28/14 (US)
Cast: Joseph Gordon Levitt, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Martin Short, Werner Herzog, William H. Macy, Mae Whitman, Mandy Patinkin, Stanley Tucci
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Studio: Studio Ghibli
Distributor: Touchstone Pictures
Genre(s): Drama, Anime, Biopic
Based On: The life of Jiro Horikoshi and The Wind Has Risen by Hori Tatsuo
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review Spoilers: Low
IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes | Wikipedia
(Note: This was originally posted at my personal blog. See it here.)
“Would you like to live in a world with or without pyramids?”
After a lot of thought, I realized that this is the essential question asked in Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film The Wind Rises.
The Wind Rises is an interesting film. I haven’t seen every single one of the films he’s directed or worked on with Studio Ghibli, but I’ve seen enough to know that his final film is a very different film from the rest of his work. Where Miyazaki’s work is usually people with very real issues in a very magical situation, The Wind Rises is very much grounded in reality, but enhanced by the main character’s dreams.
Which brings me back to that essential question.
Part way through the film, when it’s implied that Germany and Italy are leading up to the war, the dream mentor of Giovanni Caproni asks Horikoshi if he would prefer to live in a world with or without pyramids. The implication is this: would you rather live in a world with beautiful things that are rooted in hardship, or would you want to live in a world where our dreams remained untainted by the outside world and therefore unrealized.
It’s an interesting way to look at the realization of dreams and makes me wonder why so many have seen this as an anti-war film. It doesn’t really take a stance either way and certainly doesn’t go into how the war affects Horikoshi’s life in the way Grave of the Fireflies looks at how the war affected Japan. In fact, it seems to look at war as a necessary evil at some points. For all the horribleness and hardship it brings, it also produces technological advancements the world has never seen. Technological advancements that Horikoshi dreams about when he sleeps at night. It reminded me of the Wernher von Braun quote about the V-2 rocket he created being used in the Blitzkrieg: “The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet.”
This was a hard film for me to process. It’s not that it wasn’t beautiful. It was gorgeous both in scope and story. It also sneaks up on you because I found myself tearing up a lot at it when I least expected. It was challenging and quite the shakeup for Miyazaki in a good way.
I just don’t know where it falls for the rest of Miyazaki for me.
I know he can handle mature subject material just fine. You only need to see Princess Mononoke to see that and this film does it well too. It’s less that it’s bad in my book, but more of if it’s going to be my next Children of Men: A film I love and admire, but could only watch once due to the number it did on my mental health. I don’t think it will be that bad, but I don’t see myself revisiting this film a lot in the future just because of the context and content of the film.
I would like to rewatch it at least once though to hear the original Japanese with Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno as Horikoshi. I love Joseph Gordon Levitt, but his performance as Horikoshi felt a bit flat. Perhaps that was intentional and I would love to get some perspective.
Because even with the most important question, there’s an even more impression that overrides that coming from Caproni.
“Is the wind rising, Japanese boy? Then we must try to live!”
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