Retro Review by Cam Watson
Back in late January, after watching The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness and having the idea of Hayao Miyazaki as an artist knocking around in my brain for some time, I decided to go through his filmography. I hadn’t seen more than half of his films at all, and the others I hadn’t seen in upwards of ten years. Naturally, as The Wind Rises currently stands as Miyazaki’s “final” film (though that may eventually be untrue) and because its creation is at the center of the aforementioned documentary, I saved it for last. I expected it to be a well-crafted meditation on fostering dreams, and the relationship between creators and their creation, but Miyazaki blew straight past those expectations (as is his trademark, let’s be honest) and made something much more that.
The film is a fictionalized biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, a dreamer and aeronautical engineer who eventually designs the Zero fighter plane for the Japanese military. We follow Jiro through several years of his life, as he dreams of mentors, falls in love, and learns the ins and outs of airplane design. Finally, Jiro gets to put all of that into his work, only to watch it all end violently and completely. The film also incorporates elements from a Japanese novel called The Wind Has Risen (itself deriving its name from a Paul Valéry poem). It is also mentioned in The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness that much of the inspiration for the movie was derived from Miyazaki’s father, who was himself an aeronautical engineer during WWII. Furthermore, Miyazaki works in a greatly autobiographical fashion in this film, utilizing many experiences he is personally familiar with to inform the work.
If that swirl of influence sounds complicated to you, you’re not alone. When I initially started reading about what Miyazaki was drawing from to create The Wind Rises, I was blown away. But I was blown away specifically because of how well that tangle of influence comes together, and how seamlessly it is weaved into a cohesive, yet ambiguous whole. Controversially, the film is set on the precipice of WW2, and its protagonist was involved with the creation of war machines. Choosing this as the frame was a brilliant idea, because as the movie rolls forward, with every triumph and every downfall Jiro experiences, the audience always knows what is looming on the horizon. By the end, Jiro himself looks back at the things he has done, and the things his creations have done, and sees only wreckage. Jiro’s dreams of artistic expression and progress are forced into the destructive path of war. Though it is made clear his intent is never to contribute to death or destruction, the times he lives in sort of pigeonhole him into doing just that. If he wants to pursue his dream, there is no other option, and both Jiro and the audience know where this is leading him. It instills an apocalyptic feeling into the movie – not one we have to imagine, but one we can read about in history books. It permeates through almost every scene of the film, especially in the second half, when the plot starts to revolve around the country sliding towards war. In spite of this or perhaps even because of it, the choices that the characters make – the choices to live and to dream and to keep going in spite of the terrors looming around them – become amplified.
The film sets itself apart from other Miyazaki ventures by adhering to a strict realism, which is only broken up by intermittent dream sequences. Underlining the fact that this is a fictional biography, there is no magic here, no inexplicable curses, no demonic forces – just the vague unease of a very real world on the brink of utter demise, and people trying with all their might to carve out an ounce of happiness in the midst of it. There are dream sequences, to be sure, but we are acutely aware of when Jiro is dreaming and when he is not. Because of this, each character feels very grounded and understandable, and their emotions feel all the more real. Obviously, a melancholy hangs over much of Miyazaki’s work, but rarely does it feel so raw and out in the open. The last third of this film is completely devastating, and I attribute much of that to its less fantastical presentation. In much of Miyazaki’s other work, I find myself gravitating towards what he is using the characters to say thematically. In The Wind Rises, I found it impossible to look past the characters themselves for too long, which allowed me to be completely pulled into their experiences.
Another thing worth note is the way this film comments on the life and work of Miyazaki himself. In The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, Miyazaki admits that The Wind Rises is the only film of his that has made him cry upon his first complete viewing. It is not difficult to see how personal this film is to him. Jiro can very easily be read as a sort of time-shifted version of Miyazaki, one with a different career and who faced different hardships, but who has a similar single-mindedness, personal affect, and complicated relationship with his work. It doesn’t go so far as to be an irritating self-insert, but those who are familiar with Miyazaki will notice several parallels, including a working creative relationship with a former partner who eventually takes on projects in a different building. The director seems to relate to the lead, and because of this, the movie works very effectively as a sort of meta-commentary on Miyazaki and his work, and his strange relationship to it. Like Jiro, Miyazaki’s work has had an unfathomable impact on the field it inhabits. Like Jiro, Miyazaki has expressed ambiguous feelings about that impact. And like Jiro, Miyazaki has continuously pursued a humanist dream in spite of the twisting path his work has led him down. At various points in The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, Miyazaki expresses a kind of distance from his work: he refuses to sit in on marketing meetings, remarks rather negatively on the state of the anime industry he helped to pioneer (the famous “that’s why the industry is full of otaku” quote), and even ponders whether or not his own mark on the world has been a positive one. However, he also jovially comments on the possibilities of animation, and seems very genuinely proud of The Wind Rises by the time its production is finished. In a certain respect, neither Jiro nor Miyazaki’s work has remained “theirs” (as is the case with all art), and The Wind Rises mulls over what that means to the artist in a way only a film made near the very end of a director’s career can.
Hayao Miyazaki is a fascinating director. As one of very few Japanese directors to claim an actual “fandom” in the United States, his work holds a unique place in our conversations about film. His impact on animation – specifically, feature length anime productions – is massive. However, there has always seemed to be some dissonance between the way Miyazaki is received and the way he views his own career. The Wind Rises unpacks that dissonance in a satisfying way, while managing to incorporate a powerfully realistic emotional core. It has been confirmed for over 2 years now that Miyazaki is working on another film (though whether it will be finished or released is anyone’s guess), so he certainly seems to feel as if he has more to say. But to me, that doesn’t really change the finality that The Wind Rises represents.