OVP: The Wind Rises (2013)

Film: The Wind Rises (2013)
Stars: Hideaki Anno, Miori Takimoto, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Masahiko Nishimura, Stephen Alpert (oddly enough, I think this is the first time that I have seen a Miyazaki film with the original cast)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

The Wind Rises frequently points out that an artist gets “ten years of being truly creative” as a key plot point of the film, and yet Hayao Miyazaki has proven for decades that this simply isn’t true.  One of the greatest directors of our time, his work has enchanted and inspired countless audiences for decades.  Even if you’re not a fan of anime (I know very little outside of his work), you can instantly rattle off a favorite of his films.  Most rely on Princess Mononoke (at one time the highest-grossing film in Japan) or the Oscar-winning Spirited Away (my personal favorite), but you’d be forgiven if you mentioned any of the eleven movies he’s made.  Few directors have this kind of track record, which is why I approach reviewing this, his final film (after a self-imposed retirement), with a bittersweet intent.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie, like all of Miyazaki’s films, is not what you’d expect at first glance.  The movie is his first to be about a real-life historical figure, Jiro Horikoshi, who dreams of creating airplanes his entire life.  The film continues through his life, with him saving a young woman during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and then later falling in love with her at a resort after suffering personal setbacks.  All-the-while, he finds himself becoming better and better at designing planes.  The final scenes show Jiro losing the love of his life to tuberculosis, while his first successful plane is launched.  The title scene occurs in the final moments, with the wind rising both on his career and, more importantly, the gust of his wife dying, which he can sense from a distance.

The movie, though, isn’t just a beautiful love story-it also gets into the trickiness of the morality of war.  The Wind Rises has been attacked by almost all sides of the political spectrum (the movie has been called out both pro and anti-war activists, and quite frankly made almost everyone form an opinion...which undoubtedly was a good thing).  Only four years old when the war ended, Miyazaki clearly felt a deep impression from it, as this feels like his most personal of films.  The movie’s stance on the war seems to be, from my impression, fairly pacifist.  We are regularly given over to Jiro’s fascination with creating air machines, and yet we are regularly reminded that he wants to build them for beauty, not for battle.

It’s also hard not to see the persistent reminders of the devastation of war all around the film.  For those not familiar with Japanese history, the earlier sequence when the earthquake invades the countryside could be confused for a wartime battle or even the Hiroshima bomb, it is so devastating and destructive.  Miyazaki putting this unavoidable catastrophe so early in the film and then juxtaposing it with what we know will be coming soon (a man-made catastrophe) absolutely haunted me as a viewer.  Frequently we get films that show us something truly catastrophic about battle and the harshness that it inflicts on those who fight-rarely do we see a war film that questions the very war itself, and why we start them in the first place when scientific discovery or economic harmony or medical research would be such a better, unifying way to live.

These are themes that you hardly expect from an animated film, and I love that Miyazaki doesn’t even pretend that this is for children.  Frequently his movies will have adult themes but children’s motifs to anchor them-think of the generational conflicts and the critical nature of pollution in a movie like Spirited Away.  This is not a film that children should see, and not because of sex or violence.  It’s because it is a movie that requires you to think and respond like an adult.

I was highly critical of this film’s release schedule, and remain so, as I think the film could have been a stronger player in last year’s awards debate (it’s better than half of the Best Picture nominees), and at the very least should have been mentioned in the same breath as those films.  However, I’m so glad I got to take this final journey with Miyazaki in theaters.  The animation is splendid, soft and radiant, and the movie unfurls so much better in a packed theater.  I highly recommend anyone who still has the chance to catch this in theaters (though from personal experience, Miyazaki’s films rarely lose their luster when at home, so at the very least add it to your Netflix list if you are a rural cinephile).

And those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Where does The Wind Rises rank in your personal Miyazaki canon?  Do you think that it should have been a stronger presence in last year’s Oscar race?  And what are your views on the hot-button issues that it tackles?  Share in the comments!