film review: the wind rises

Since childhood, famed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki has been fascinated by flight. A minor glance over his anthology of work (most notably with Studio Ghibli) will reveal the consistencies of his attraction, whether through an enormous moving castle or a large Totoro that bounces across the treetops amid a still night sky.

 The Wind Rises is a parade of standard Miyazaki splendor. Instantly, the grand nature of Studio Ghibli’s animation causes momentary detachment. The sheer brilliance of creativity from the detailed landscapes, to the intricacy of motion as strong gusts of wind lurch aspiring pilot Jiro Horikoshi’s robe, engulf the plot in a necessary instant of appreciation.

Atop the wings of a gliding plane, Jiro is met with Caproni, an Italian aviation pioneer and aeronautical engineer who offers Jiro a line from French poet, Paul Valéry: ‘The wind is rising. We must try to live,’ a phrase with much significance to the recurrence of its allusion throughout the film. Though persistent, Jiro’s passion for flight does not suffice to the myopia that strains him. Instead, Caproni’s ethereal guidance insists his passion takes form in design rather than physical flight.

From then, the film tracks Horikoshi’s ascent as an engineering student in Tokyo through to the ranks of the Japanese aviation industry. Determined to advance his skill and adhere to the threat of Germany’s constant technological developments as WWII hits, the grandeur of his designs are exploited by the greed of war.

It is only when he holidays to the countryside where he meets Castorp, a German who warns him of the inevitability of both Japan and Germany’s demise, that the reality of global situations become more than just the dream of an ambitious man. Here too he reconnects with Nahoko, a young girl, now a woman, whom he once helped as a student in Tokyo following an immense earthquake that derailed the train they both traveled on.

As a note, this scene is one that warrants an individual mention due to the brilliance of Miyazaki’s vision for animation. The wave-like ripple as homes are lifted from the earth; the aftermath’s debris of structures ablaze and abandoned; these feats are only surmountable by Miyazaki’s ambitious mind.

At this point, Nahoko is expected to be the typically tough female character that so often features in Miyazaki’s films. Though she does not run with the wolves through cavernous forests, her struggle with tuberculosis is one of defiance and realism. This forces a change in pace as her relationship with Jiro diverts the film’s course to that of a tragic Hollywood romance, but her brave presence reiterates Miyazaki’s pro-feminist nature.

As you engage with the film, moments of recurrence and prophecy are at the crux of the narrative. Through character interaction and the atmosphere of setting (notably the changes in weather and overall mise en scéne that works to foreshadow a great deal of the film’s direction), comments are made on the inevitable destruction of war. The preemptive silences as legions of thundering planes creep up to bleach the sky is hauntingly beautiful and serves the elegiac dismay at its core. Or the deep rumbles accompanying visions of Jiro’s designs disintegrating as the wind cuts the wings and sends them spiraling to oblivion.

The victims of Jiro are bereft to tragic timing.  His talent is admirable insofar as intentions grant him. Outshined by each planes’ use as chief to Japan’s infamous kamikaze flights, the beauty of his work amounts to nothing more than a murderous weapon of war.

Where Jiro’s commitment to the delicacy of Nahoko’s condition contradicts his commitment to designing the perfect killing machine, the fragility of human life becomes the central debate. Miyazaki serves us a demonstration of how one’s involuntary alliances to parasitical causes warp perspectives and skew ambitions.

Though the film is a departure from Miyazaki’s usual efforts of flying castles, giant cat buses and shape-shifting creatures from lands unknown, The Wind Rises is a mature illumination of extremism. Through endeavours of aspiration come instances in which you must ask yourself, ‘Is the wind still rising?’

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