Review of The Wind Rises

This is a movie about our doom, about the ways in which we try to live on until we can’t anymore. We all have a goal, a calling—airplanes, work, family, movies—but the most we can do is pretend that they will bring us fulfillment or lasting joy. We will never be able to change the world through our art. We can never really grasp the desolation of the world we live in, that status quo we are all complicit in maintaining. We are all just beautiful planes sent off to war. By following our obsessions, we sacrifice everything that used to matter to us, bit bybit. And in the end, Miyazaki would give it all up again for his art. He lives on for his art.

“But still, I choose a world with pyramids in it.”

It’s a false choice, of course. Either way, we will all be equal in the end. Jiro is dead and so is every soldier he was responsible for murdering. All that's left are the planes.