Review of The Wind Rises
Kaze Tachinu is a work of art intended for adult audiences. No, this is not a movie in praise of war or denial of people involved in war. If you want a clear-cut movie which is kind enough to tell you who's the good and the bad guys, then sit back and enjoy watching Pearl Harbor (2001) with a Coke and popcorn instead. Although the message is quite straightforward, and easy to relate to for people living in uncertain times (including Japan still affected by the 3.11 Earthquake in Tohoku Region), it might not be for other people, especially for very young audiences. The story, partlynon-fiction, evolves around a young mechanical designer whose dream was to build beautiful airplanes. He ultimately succeeds in building fully up-to-date planes, but which went to war, and none came back.
His personal life is set in Japan when people were facing great uncertainty after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the Great Depression, and preparation for the war with China, then America, and Britain, and Netherlands, and the Soviets ... He and his colleagues do what they do best and what they are supposed to do under those circumstances: make planes. Just do it.
His life enters into a new stage when he meets again accidentally with the girl whose life he saved during the earthquake. Their beautiful romance and eventual marriage is however overshadowed by her disease (tuberculosis, which was incurable at that time), and war.
If you are expecting a hero in active struggle against a huge evil system, you won't find in this film. Nor would you find a heroine whose decision could be easily understood by contemporaries (or perhaps none other than herself; read also the lyrics of the ending song). However, they are hero and heroines of ordinary real life, at the time when life ended abruptly and wasted meaninglessly. There's even Special Higher Police arresting you for your thoughts and private relations, and public objections to the military controlled government often resulted in death by torture in prison at those times.
If so, how can life can be lived?
This is the question that Miyzaki poses to the audience. It is not a readily answerable question, and you would be tested your imagination of what the hero, Horikoshi Jiro, and the heroine, Naoko, must have thought when they are off screen and out of camera.
Actually, then and now, people's life does end abruptly, and if not properly lived, rather meaninglessly.
When the wind rises, you would have to attempt to live.
"Le vent se lève, il faut tenter de vivre" (Paul Valery, introduced in Japan by Hori Tatsuo- whose autobiographic romance novel is partly incorporated into the movie)
People suffer in time of crisis and uncertainty. Lives are ended abruptly. But you have to live the life that you are given, and use your best effort in doing so in daily life. That is Miyazaki's "last will and testament" (as he jokes) to the contemporary Japanese who are still socially shaken by the impact of the Earthquake, and when growing conflicts with a neighbor is provoking jingoists' calls for arms.
Final words: Kaze Tachinu is a thought-provoking movie with both beautiful and horrifying moments. This might not be my most favorite work (need more innocent fantasies like Totoro and the Castle in the Sky: Laputa), but it is definitely one of Miyazaki's finest works and one that he clearly needed to present now. It is one of his boldest and most experimental.
9/10. Well done.