Review of The Wind Rises

A biopic following a airplane designer from youth to the death of his wife and end of WWII, skipping the rest of his life. TWR is heavily fictionalized to the point where 'biopic' is questionable, which raises the question: if the point is not to depict Jiro Horikoshi's life, by adding an entirely fictional romance and death from tuberculosis, and entirely skipping over the last 37 years of his life, then what was the point, and why did Miyazaki choose animator & director (but not voice actor) Hideaki Anno to voice the protagonist? A good hint comes from the title of the excellent accompanying documentary ofthe process of making TWR and Studio Ghibli's other film-in-progress, _The Princess Kaguya_: _The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness_. Indeed, TWR is more about dreams than planes or war: it starts in a dream, ends in a dream, and the fast cuts without any dissolves or other signals or markers of time produce a dream-like effect where one never knows when a scene is set or when in the future the movie has jumped to or if one is in one of the several dreams and what in the dream is real or not. (For example, the dream with Caproni features an absurd looking multi-story multi-winged flying boat passenger plane which probably most viewers assumed was some sort of 1920s-esque parody, but the prototype of the Caproni Ca.60 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caproni_Ca.60 was very real.)

The documentary, to some extent, focuses on the human cost of making anime: it is a notoriously brutal career path which burns out animators, requires endless hours of painstaking labor from hundreds of people, and destroys any kind of family life. Stories abound of animators making sub minimum wage or sleeping 4 hours a day, and Miyazaki's son has written of his anger with his father for putting his anime career above his family and hardly being a father at all. (Although Goro Miyazaki comes off as a bit of an ass in the documentary himself.) All to produce some stories and entertainment, mostly for children, of dubious social value.

It is no surprise that Miyazaki and Anno have often expressed doubts about the value of their careers: why do they make anime? Then again, did they ever really have a choice? However much Miyazaki might vow after completing a movie to never undergo the insane ordeal again or to retire, he winds up making anime again. (As indeed, he predictably has after vowing TWR would be his last, and is working on an anime, _Boro the Caterpillar_, even now.) They can't stop, won't stop. In the lottery of fascinations (http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/30/the-lottery-of-fascinations/), they drew a cursed ticket. In the same way, Jiro (and it's interesting that the other 'Jiro' that instantly comes to mind is from _Jiro Dreams of Sushi_, which likewise examines the question of a normal life vs the demands of an obsession leading to greatness) 'simply wanted to make a beautiful plane'; but in that era, and even now, there is little civilian market for a fast maneuverable single-person plane - only the military needs such a thing. It was easy to make the scientist/engineer's Faustian bargain with the military: you can get the funding you need for what you want... as long as it has military applications, and you don't mind selling your soul or having to witness the consequences. (Admittedly, most who make that bargain don't see it backfire as quickly and spectacularly as the Japanese did.)

The intended conclusion, presumably (given the bizarrely abrupt non-ending), is that expressed by Baron Caproni, when he analogizes war-making planes to the pyramids of Egypt: as terrible as the human cost to build them was, their greatness and immortality were worth it, and the world is the better for them. One can quibble about the facts there (archaeologists apparently regard the pyramids as built by a largely voluntary labor force in the Nile's off-season where agriculture was not possible, which given Malthusian conditions might not've affected standards of living) but the analogy falls flat: I don't wind up convinced that there was anything particularly beautiful about the Zero, much less any enduring eternal beauty which could justify contributing to so many unjustified wars. Jiro and the other should have, like the proverbial Chinese scholars, declined to serve an evil emperor and retreated to the hills to await a better regime to serve while they tended their gardens. Even after two watches, the rationale comes off as weak despite all the soap opera histrionics. And while the use of Anno as a voice-actor is an intriguing art-mirroring-life choice, ultimately Anno is something of a disappointment in going through the movie in a pleasant monotone. (You can also listen to Anno voice-acting in the _Evangelion_ Addition audio-drama, and to interviews of him like _Hideaki Anno Talks To Kids_ to confirm that he voices Jiro as himself, essentially; I'm always surprised how high-pitched Anno's voice is for such a relatively big guy.) Indeed, the plot and pacing overall are deeply unsatisfactory, and I think I liked the movie considerably less after rewatching it, as all the flaws became much more obvious on a rewatch: frankly, it's kind of boring! Actually, I would have to say that the documentary about TWR, _Kingdom of Dreams and Madness_, was much more interesting than the movie itself...

So the message falls flat. What was good about it then? I would say: the opening dream-flying sequence is indeed lovely in the same way as _Ponyo_'s ship & water animations; the earthquake sequence, though brief, is also good; there are occasional parts of interest in the plane designs and the Caproni dream sequences. Overall, I would rank this as above _From Up On Poppy Hill_ (with its egregiously awful plot twist) or _On Your Mark_ or _Only Yesterday_ (and maybe _The Cat Returns_) but well below the Miyazaki classics like _Castle of Cagliostro_ or _Whisper of the Heart_ or _Ponyo_ etc.