Review of The Wind Rises
“Would you follow your dreams, even if they get molded into something ugly that you didn’t intend?” That is the big question that this movie keeps asking throughout its big and its emotional moments. And it creates a wonderful and beautiful film around what essentially starts as a simple “follow your dream” moral. The film is more or less loosely based on the life of Jirou Horikoshi, an engineer who designed the A6M Zero Fighter Aircraft that were later used by Japan during World War II. It follows him from the moment in his childhood that he wishes to design planes, being inspired by a dream, allthe way up to the first successful test of his new plane. And all the ups and downs in his life that he had to endure to make his dream a reality.
Like I said before, “Dreams” are a big part of this movie, as it mostly focuses on Jirou and his work towards his dream. And it makes the movie enjoyable to watch, as you really follow him through many steps in his life jumping forward a bit each time. It uses these timeskips well, as we actually get to see him get closer and closer at accomplishing his goals.
The movie follows it all the way through and it makes the, usually generic “follow your dreams'' message feel a lot more genuine. Not only that, but it actually puts a more unique spin on it, as Jirou gets confronted with the thought that one day his planes may be used to hurt others, even if he didn’t want them to be used for that. But even then, the movie keeps a positive and optimistic outlook to this message, saying you can’t blame the dreamer. While this may come across as ignorant towards consequences dreams can have, it fits with the overall positive tone of the movie and it still doesn’t shy away from showing the damage these planes will cause in the future.
The art also compliments that, having some incredible animation that gets put to amazing use, especially in a lot of flying and dream scenes, especially the former being a Miyazaki trademark at this point. It also captures the overall feelings of each scene. The more realistic looking characters help with grounding this story more and help more with the fact that this film is more or less based on a real life person.
All of the characters were pretty great too and made this film fun to watch. Be it main-characters or even just the side-characters that appear for a couple of minutes. Especially Jirou was a pretty good main-characters. His single-mindedness in wanting to make his wish come true to the point that he loses himself in fantasies and dreams do make you wanna see him succeed. You want to see his plane taking off just as much as he wants it.
My only complaint with the movie is, that the romance sub-plot isn't as well developed. It starts off strong, but over time as the movie continues, it feels like it’s getting weaker and weaker. It’s still pretty good...but I feel like compared to the rest of the film, it could`ve been developed even more.
All I can say is that if Miyazaki wouldn’t have now returned from his “retirement” to make another film, this would have been a great goodbye for him. But even as it is now, it’s definitely a masterpiece with an amazing message about dreams, some amazing Ghibli animation and likable characters you want to see more off.