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."

Film: We Are The Best

When I was in high school I bought a used electric guitar at my local music store. It was this beautiful homemade instrument shaped a little like a Les Paul with a striped neck made from two different types of wood that ran from the head through to the end of the body. The case was lined with deep red velvet and when you opened it the overwhelming scent of wood varnish seemed to add to it's authenticity. A professional musician passing through town had sold it - I imagined it might have a rich, mysterious history.

An interest in music was definitely the common denominator for my group of friends but I never really had the confidence or initiative to organize like they did. I played my guitar with my dinky amplifier turned down very low during jazz band at school. A few of my friends made a Ben Folds Five-esque trio and did a great job playing a school function. I remember sheepishly hauling my guitar over to my friend Tyler's house for a jam session - he played the bass. Although I knew how to play, turning it into something individual, unguided, and self-expressive was much harder than playing the notes of a sheet of music. I dinked around and gave up after a half hour. Music was definitely a gateway to my teenage community, though, a knowledge base that had been introduced to me by others, expanded on my own in my bedroom with headphones, and then turned into a means of relating with my peers. For the girls of We Are The Best it serves the same function, allowing a pair of punk-loving 13-year-olds in a post-punk world to define themselves and distinguish an identity that helps them grown up and learn about the same stuff the rest of us have to deal with at some point too: friendship, family, love & politics, In other words, life.

Set in Stockholm in 1982, We Are The Best opens with 13-year-old Bobo at her mother's birthday, sitting sulkingly while everyone goes about the celebration. Then the worst happens and she is noticed by her mother on the way to her room and she becomes the center of attention. She complains on the phone to her best-friend Klara the same martyr's cry of preteens the world over: "My mom is the worst. She's so embarrassing." Klara disagrees. "My parents are the worst. Just listen to them" and then she holds to the phone out the door to hear an argument about laundry. Both girls are punk rock in a disco pop age. Klara gets grief about her mohawk and impassioned pleas about the perils of nuclear power from the other girls at school. Both are called ugly and despised by others. One night on a whim at their local youth center they decide to make their own punk band. Mostly they just bang on the drums and bass available in the common rehearsal space. They enlist their overtly Christian classmate Hedvig to help them because she actually knows how to play music, albeit only classical guitar. She's also an outcast and they bond over their first song about how much gym class sucks called "Hate the Sport."

The whole thing is joyously fun and as the trailer says, it for anyone who is 13 years old, will be 13 years old, or was 13 years old. The director, Lukas Moodysson, hits every beat just right balancing the touching moments as you watch these girls form and strengthen their friendships, deal with boys getting in the way, and fight a riotous audience at their coming out concert. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments. I really loved Hedvig's character and how she provided an opportunity for Bobo and Klara to realize the merit of compassion. Hedvig is more mature than the other two but also benefits in the relationship by learning to have fun and let her hair down (or actually, to cut it off). Even though Bobo and Klara are anti-God and anti-religion they get a taste of how Christianity has punk rock roots as they see the courage Hedvig has to be herself even when it's not popular.

One token of a great movie is that it helps you expand your circle of humanity. I've never found MMA cage fighting to be enjoyable, and yet while watching Warrior I was on the edge of my seat. You might never have associated punk music with the fragile yet hilarious stage of life of coming-of-age of preteens but through these girls' characters you come to love punk music for the opportunity it provides them to grow up and accept new people. Although they might resist the notion, the love these girls develop for each other is just the same that a group of cheerleaders might. We Are The Best reiterates the fact that you already knew that life for punk rockers is pretty much the same as it is for the rest of us. Roger Ebert said, "The movies are like a machine that generates empathy." This is something I'm always looking for and We Are The Best takes you into the space of being a 13 year old. From a goofy dad that wants to embarrass you by bringing a clarinet to your punk band rehearsal to the joy of serendipitous friendships turning into lifelong relationships, this movie reminds you of yourself - whether you've had the same experiences or not - in a fresh way.

We Are The Best is currently streaming on Netflix.

Interstellar

For some reason the vast, incomprehensible expanse we know as space inspires some of the greatest filmmakers to want to tell great stories about family relationships. It's not that big of a mystery: contemplating the infinite and immeasurable is daunting, almost traumatic, when confronted full in the face. When facing the possibility of complete oblivion and meaninglessness it seems natural to focus on what is most meaningful and dear and search for significance there. Most recently there was Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity taking a John Donne-sian ("No man is an island") approach comparing the isolation of space to social remoteness. Another great entry of this type is Robert Zemeckis's Contact, doing a more traditional, but no less inspiring, take on the "are we alone?" question based on the theories of Carl Sagan. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey holds legendary status, and rightly so, as he partnered with Arthur C. Clarke, one of the greatest sci-fi writers of all time, to examine the existence of humanity itself. Heck, even Steven Spielberg took a couple cracks at it with E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And now Christopher Nolan books his entry in this impressive field of work with Interstellar, a visually-stunning and powerful movie arguing for nothing less than the literal cosmic power of love.

Ok, if you can handle the very last little bit of that last paragraph (singing only a little bit of Huey Lewis & the News to yourself) then you are prepped and ready for Interstellar. There are one or two moments during Christopher Nolan's expansive IMAX-ready epic that tackle that point very directly and I commend him and his brother and writing-partner, Jonathan, for putting some bare moments in the film that really cut back the layers to communicate so directly to the audience. Because despite its seemingly formidable length (2 hours and 49 minutes that flew by), Nolan seems to have ensured that every bit of the movie serves the story and provides cinematic and entertainment value.

One of the most obvious of a number of elements that make Interstellar a masterpiece is a great cast. Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain are top-level actors on par with the high-level talent that Nolan is able to attract to his projects (Hathaway having worked with him previously on The Dark Night Rises). McConaughey plays Cooper, an astronaut-turned-farmer in a world that's dying and a society that's given up on space travel - and almost science altogether. Mackenzie Foy plays his young daughter Murph and shares the part with Chastain as her adult counterpart: the two actresses fit the character nicely. Coop and Murph stumble (or do they?) on an old mentor/teacher of Cooper's, Professor Brand played by Nolan-regular Michael Caine, who has a use for his unused astronaut skills. Anne Hathaway is Brand's daughter Amelia, a member of the crew planning to travel through a wormhole that has popped up near Saturn and seems to provide some promising prospects for a second home for humanity. Epic interstellar-ness ensues. As the film progresses Nolan tackles the theory of relativity and black holes. The support cast, including a surprising unbilled cameo, inspire excitement and confidence.

At the heart of the story is the relationship between Coop and Murph. In an article in The Guardian, Nolan reveals that part of what drives this movie is his reflection on his own relationship with his children. Let that idea sink in as you're watching. Interstellar dives into some pretty heady relativistic theory that, in essence, means his daughter is aging faster than him. Their relationship goes through some traumatic episodes and, when considered by the film's end, covers decades of time with very little direct interaction from the point that he leaves on his mission to "save the world." The core of what Interstellar examines, rather than the reality of relativistic space travel and the decline of the human race (both of which are explored believably and thought-provokingly, each deserving of their own analysis) is how the bond of love between these people somehow makes a real, physical, and lasting connection.

Visually, Interstellar is the direct descendant of Kubrick's aforementioned 2001. Nolan takes the audience past the rings of Saturn, through a wormhole and into a number of unique environments that are truly worthy of comparison with 2001. If you've ever had the chance to see Hubble 3D at an IMAX theater then you have a taste of what you're in for here. Filmed on it to a greater proportion than any of his previous films, Nolan's preferred format for viewing this movie is on 70mm IMAX film. Luckily I live mere minutes from a properly-outfitted theater. Did you know a true IMAX screen is a giant square? Nolan takes full advantage of the format's capabilities, providing, through both sight and sound, the most "immersive" experience possible. I must say that the Sacramento Esquire Theater didn't disappoint and I highly recommend taking advantage of the opportunity to enjoy this movie as its creator intended (find a theater here). The fuller picture and core-breaching sound provide a sensational, cinematic experience that makes a pickup driving through cornfields, a shuttle-like blast off, and relativistic space travel equally enthralling. It's worth it just for that aspect alone. Apart from stunning imagery and great acting, Hans Zimmer's score and some truly amazing and dynamic sound design round out the most obvious pieces of what makes this movie great.