Film: The Wind Rises

It may end up being remembered that Hayo Miyazaki was the last powerful force in hand-drawn animated films. While there is certainly some great stuff happening around the world uniquely using and creating new or hybrid forms of classic animation -- see Tom Moore from Ireland (The Secret of Kells and his latest Song of the Sea, recently nominated for an Oscar) or Sylvain Chomet in France (The Triplets of Belleville, The Illusionist) or Ari Folman from Israel (Waltz with Bashir, The Congress) -- Miyazaki and his beloved Studio Ghibli, rumored to be closing shop or at least shifting gears from feature films, has been the most consistent in continuing to make great, classically animated movies in an era of 3D-animation dominance. The reason sounds to be the same that causes even legendary, blockbuster filmmakers like Steven Speilberg and George Lucas to have said it is hard to make profitable anything other than a studio-based tentpole movie in today's climate: money.

But my point is not to decry what's happening on a larger scale in movies today (something I have only borrowed opinions on anyway). Rather, it is to draw your attention to a great movie by Miyazaki that, even it it doesn't end up being his last film, serves as a bittersweet culmination of a master's body of work and could be the swan song signifying the end of an era. The Wind Rises, Hayao Miyazaki's final feature (or so he says), is that film. It tells the story of Jiro Horikoshi, an aircraft engineer well-known for designing the WWII era Zero Fighter for Japan. Miyazaki makes up most of the details of Horikoshi's life but says he feels like it represents his character and his mindset. One of these fabricated details is Jiro's wife, Naoko. Making such a sweet, fully-formed love story serve as part of the core of a movie is another departure for Miyazaki, but not one I would've ever doubted he could do so well. The Wind Rises is a devastatingly beautiful film reflection on dreams and love and flying. On many levels, this is lofty stuff indeed.

Naoko and Jiro - a fated meeting

For those that know Miyazaki's work, the subject matter is a first sign that this might be a different sort of movie for him. Known for creating visually and conceptually stunning fantasy worlds featuring youthful heroines in films like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle; this is the first time he bases a film on real characters, with an adult male protagonist, no less. The distinction becomes more pronounced through the watching. Jiro is a man drawn with focused passion towards both his life's work and love. Rather than a more short-term film focused on a compacted series of events, it looks at a larger span of life. The emotional climax is less forced by time and situation than by relationships and reflection. As I mentioned, there is a beautiful love story tied to the movie's core. The themes of the film are more mature than I've seen from him and seem like they are very much coming from the mind of a man pondering on time spent and a life lived. In a press conference announcing the completion of the film, the man playing the voice of Jiro, Hideaki Anno, a director mentee of Miyazaki and non-actor doing his first major voice-acting role, said that he sees his mentor as never having really grown up, that this movie is his first mature, more (only slightly more) adult-oriented story. Kudos to Miyazaki for holding on to his youth for 72 years.

While all this is true, it is most certainly still a Miyazaki film. The heart of the story involves drawing on courage and determination to reach one's dream. The dreams of Jiro serve as the fantasy world in this film, and that is where he meets with his own imagined mentor, Caproni, based on a real-life Italian aeronautical engineer. Often lost in his imagination while designing aircraft, Jiro uses the dream space to test out his designs and work towards his goal of creating his masterpiece. As the narration switches from plot development to Jiro's imagination we often see an aircraft flying fantastically, only to end in it's destruction as a design's weakness becomes apparent in the imagined test flight in his mind. It makes a good case for the role of visualization in the creative process. Jiro is introduced first as a boy and Caproni, never aging in the imagination sequences, continues to call Jiro "Japanese boy" as he grows into manhood. So in reality, it is just another film film about the dreams of a youthful character.

Beyond the thematic consistencies with his other movies, The Wind Rises is most certainly a Miyazaki film in so many other aspects. Visually, aurally, musically, it is a continuation of the development of his style as well as the team of great people at Studio Ghibli. The earthquake sequence is unique and impressive. Moving landscapes seen from trains and planes are stunning. Simple shots of someone looking out a window are so often more interesting than a simple straight shot. In a brilliant touch, the sound effects often employ a chorus of human voices to characterize non-human things--like the earthquake or engines and other mechanics--rather than finding a more realistic sound. And as always in Miyazaki's films, the music, including the final song, provide the emotional heart of the story. I'm so easily manipulated by great music. Joe Hisaishi, a regular for Studio Ghibli, holds that credit for this movie.

Designers Honjo and Jiro at work

There are so many points of symbolism and themes that can be explored here: creativity, age, love, death, war. Some great questions to think about while watching include, "What does the wind represent?, "At what points in the story does Jiro turn to his spiritual mentor Caproni for guidance?", and "Why are their mouths so big when they talk?." I know I can get overly earnest thinking about how things "poignantly reflect the transient nature of life." But I would like to delve into one of the points made fairly explicitly, and that is the question of limited capacity for artists to be creative.

In the film, Jiro's best friend and fellow-engineer Honjo makes ironic reflections saying things like, "You need a family at home to motivate you to work harder at the office," as a reason for his getting married, or that even though Japan is a poor country they are spending so much money to make airplanes. He calls them hypocrisies. Caproni, Jiro's spiritual guide, is also pointing out these ironies but his attitude is different, more tolerant and serendipitously flippant about these observations, accepting and then forgetting them as a part of life. In these scenes between Jiro and Caproni Miyazaki appears to be having a conversation between two different versions of himself: young and old, up-and-comer and retiring-legend. Caproni proclaims to Jiro that the young have 10 years of artistic creativity before the well runs dry; he urges Jiro to use his to the fullest. Caproni then takes Jiro on a joy ride on a new plane he's designed and points out it is his last flight. One can't but help to think this is Miyazaki's pre-emptory announcement following this film's completion that it would be his last. Although he's said this and come back before - this time it seems like he means it. At 74 and with such a breadth of work under his belt you can't deny he deserves it.

Jiro shows Caproni his as-yet-unrealized master design

But I can't help but find fault with Miyazaki for his thesis on the capacity for creativity, especially the time limit and the focus on youth. I've said it before: the best artists do (and any artist can) improve with age and experience. This film of Miyazaki's is a clear case study of the principle. Perhaps his earlier works do reflect more daring and drastic innovation, so that Nausicaa and the Valley of the Winds sets up a world that makes Howl's Moving Castle less surprising (although no less vibrant and mesmerizing). But the fine-tuned, nuanced, and deeply-moving nature of his later work speaks for itself. If Miyazaki took his own 10-year thesis seriously, neither myself nor many other fans of his work here in the US would be enjoying his films today, nor would they ever have.

The cross-cultural success of Miyazaki's films is undisputed, but it was Princess Mononoke in 1997, and then especially Spirited Away in 2001 (which took home the first Oscar for Best Animated Film) that sparked the raving adoration of his work seen today in the US, including the developing of the distribution deal with Disney which delivers his work to US audiences in a very thoughtful and respectful manner. These films were well into his third decade of work. While youth certainly is an artistic force with power to burst through the seams of the past, breaking molds, rebelling, and presenting raw innovation, it is a myth to think that all artists' ability to create truly great work is limited to a small frame of time in the earlier eras of a person's life. Holding on to this idea is the only real limiting fact that exists.

Still, the "10 years" idea does make me think. After watching the press conference with Miyazaki this idea is clarified a little bit. Miyazaki says that for many people there is a period of intense trial, productivity, and focus that can be life-defining. Thoughts like that really scare me. It makes me question whether I've had my ten years, whether they are yet to come, whether I'll realize it, and whether I'll take advantage of the opportunity they present. This a real fear for me, but one I'm glad The Wind Rises has brought to mind again.

In checking out other reviews of The Wind Rises I was surprised to learn its reception was much cooler than many of Miyazaki's other recent films. It is not full of fantastical beings created from an amalgam of cultural reference points and autobiographical anecdotes, all wrapped up in a fantasy, as with some of Miyazaki's other works. It doesn't deliver the story in as similar a way as his other movies. But what The Wind Rises does provide is an atmosphere as equally effective, if not more so, than any of his other films, and using a story, combined with imaginative characters easy to empathize with, that get at the heart of what it means to fly, to dream, to love, and to live. Despite the infinite possibilities for innovation that the medium of film offers, this is really it's most desired and most important result.

"The wind rises. We must try to live."