REVIEW: The Wind Rises

The Wind Rises

The Wind Rises is a lot of things. It’s an ode to creativity and inspiration. It’s a lament over the destructiveness of war and commerce. It’s a love story, biography and historical drama. But what it feels like, more than anything, is a goodbye.

The film is being sold as the final directorial effort by Hayao Miyazaki, grand master of Japanese animation and one of the most gifted storytellers of our age. If it really is his swansong (it’s worth noting that Miyazaki had ‘retired’ from directing once already, shortly before returning to make his masterpiece, Spirited Away), then it definitely feels like it. The Wind Rises feels bittersweet from its opening and an air of mournful wistfulness pervades until the credits roll. In between those two bookends is a beautiful but imperfect film.

The Wind Rises

Considering the fantastical worlds and creatures that Miyazaki has brought us in previous movies, it’s surprising to see him bow out with such a comparatively restrained tale. The film is a fictionalised account of the early life of Jiro Horikoshi, the aeronautical engineer who designed aircraft used by the Japanese military during World War II. There are no catbuses or giant walking castles here. Instead, people sit hunched over their desks, smoke with abandon and come home late from work. A handful of dream sequences gives Miyazaki licence to provide the occasional otherworldly flourish but for the most part, this is a gentle, grounded movie that takes its time.

On an immediate level, the film is gorgeous. Miyazaki’s production house Studio Ghibli has always come up trumps with its visuals, but for this particular effort, it outdoes itself at almost every opportunity. Seeing this film on a cinema screen is less of an activity and more of a moral obligation. The imagery breathes with life, and it’s some of the briefest, most intimate moments that are the most lovingly depicted: a pencil scrawling equations across a sheet of paper, a paintbrush smearing oils over canvas or an aircraft soaring across an azure sky dotted with cloud. All are breathtaking to behold. Miyazaki almost seems to be reminding the audience that after he’s gone, no-one else will be able to do all of this quite so well.

The Wind Rises

It is the story that proves to be the biggest challenge. Jiro Hirokoshi is depicted as a gentle but assertive genius who finds inspiration in mackerel bones and helps earthquake victims and street urchins. He also designs machines that would later be used by his government to wage war and kill thousands. Any inner conflict that he endures because of the latter is touched on, but lightly. The film is less concerned with moral struggles than it is with the challenges of creating, and later coping with disappointment and loss. The ambiguity feels uncomfortable at times, but ambiguity is a recurring theme across Miyazaki’s work. Who is he to judge? And for that matter, why should we?

A touching love story gives the film some of its most heartwarming moments and an extended interlude at a hotel, where a mysterious man with grey eyes foretells the apocalypse of the Second World War and the folly of Japan’s involvement in it, has a sense of drama that is chilling. The movie reaches an emotional crescendo in its closing moments that feels like it could have been given greater scope, and then it’s all over. A sad song plays and the audience makes its way towards the exit. We’re done.

The Wind Rises

If Miyazaki really is retiring – and it is this writer’s sincerest wish that he isn’t – then he could have chosen to go out in a blaze of glory. Instead, he has opted for a dignified, melancholic bow, a move utterly in keeping with the character of this wise, wonderful man who has given us so much. The Wind Rises is a flawed masterpiece that has stayed with me days after I watched it. Reportedly, Miyazaki was inspired to make the film after reading a quote from Hirokoshi himself: “All I wanted was to make something beautiful.” Such an admission could just as easily sum up Miyazaki’s career in a nutshell.

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