The Wind Rises
Hayao Miyazaki
The story: Inspired by the Italian plane designer Giovanni Battista Caproni (Nomura Mansai), Jiro Horikoshi (Hideaki Anno) dreams of flight as a young boy. After studying engineering at university, he works for an airplane manufacturer and eventually succeeds in coming up with a fast aircraft, the Mitsubishi A5M. Both the A5M and its successor, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, were used by Japan during World War II. Along the way, Jiro falls in love with Naoko (Miori Takimoto), a girl he meets on a train journey disrupted by the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. Based on writer-director Hayao Miyazaki’s manga adaptation of a 1937 short story of the same name by Tatsuo Hori.

Japan’s master of animation Hayao Miyazaki is the man behind some of my favourite flights of fancy.
From My Neighbour Totoro (1988) to Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) to Spirited Away (2001), he has created gorgeously rendered worlds in which tales of bravery and magic unfold.
The Wind Rises, however, does not soar to the same heights.
Perhaps to some extent, he was kept earthbound by the fact that this was a story based on the real-life character of Horikoshi, chief engineer of various World War II Japanese fighter designs.
In the first place, it was a controversial choice of subject matter given Japanese military aggression and the association of the Zero plane with kamikaze suicide missions during the war.
Miyazaki is careful not to glorify war and destruction.
Early on, Horikoshi’s mother says to him: “Fighting is never justified.” And his role model Caproni says more explicitly that “the dream of flight is cursed” – a thing of beauty can be an instrument of nightmare as well.
At the same time, there is the idea that all we can do is try to survive in tumultuous times.
“The wind is rising, we must try to live”, from French poet Paul Valery’s The Graveyard By The Sea, is a couplet that is repeated several times in the movie.
It is not fully persuasive though and the prickly question of Horikoshi’s culpability in the building of war machines is too readily resolved with a throwaway line: “We’re not arms merchants, we just want to build good aircraft.”
As a movie, The Wind Rises is, as always for a Studio Ghibli feature, beautifully illustrated. Miyazaki pays attention to the little details and that helps to bring the animated world vividly alive.
For example, in a scene of Horikoshi and Naoko rushing back to her home after the earthquake strikes, as they move against the flow of people fleeing, they catch the attention of a boy who glances at them curiously.
It could do with better pacing, though.
The film delved at length into the technicalities of plane design and the human element felt a bit short-changed.
Horikoshi and Naoko’s relationship is not that compelling as well, though there is a lovely wedding sequence between the two.
Hopefully, this will not be Miyazaki’s last film as announced. By one count, this is apparently his sixth retirement. There could well be wind still left in his sails.
(ST)