Review of The Wind Rises

Hayao Miyazaki has left a long, long, long legacy behind him. If nothing else, the experience of tearing through all the Studio Ghibli films in chronological order has shown me, in no uncertain terms, just how titanic a shadow this master has cast, not just over other directors or anime studios, but over his own history as well. His journey as an artist has been one of constant upward climb, never being satisfied with the previous peak he reached, always pressing onward to higher and higher mountains, refining and re-discovering the same ideas in a million different ways. And now, at last, I’ve reached what,by all accounts, really will be Miyazaki’s final feature film: The Wind Rises, the real-life story of another master artisan who constantly sought higher and higher mountains, forging ahead through hardship, confusion and inner conflict with the simple desire to make something truly beautiful. You couldn’t ask for a more complete narrative arc, a better representation of life-imitates-art, a more fitting swan song for a man who’s earned this moment to close his own story out on his own terms. If this is truly Miyazaki’s final film, then it’s as perfect a farewell as he could have possibly hoped for.

The story is an autobiography centered around the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who designed the Japanese war planes that would end up fighting in World War 2. It follows him from a young, aspirational dreamer, obsessed with building the greatest airplane he can imagine, to a university student alight with genius, to his many trials and struggles in the air force design team to get his dream off the ground, through good times and bad, hardship and heartache, and his near-constant inner turmoil over his massive artistic drive and the knowledge of what his creations will eventually be used for. Like Miyazaki’s previous works that have dealt with real-life issues, it doesn’t shy away from the darkness at the story’s core, the understanding of the ugliness of war in the background that underpins every triumph Jiro makes. All he wants to do is make something beautiful, but that beauty will be used for something terrible in the end. How does one square that gap? How does one keep dreaming when their dreams run alongside nightmares?

For once, Miyazaki doesn’t give an easy answer, and that unresolved tension runs like an electric current throughout the entire film. Beauty and chaos are constantly juxtaposed, right from the very opening scene where Jiro dreams of soaring through the sky, only for the plane in his dreams to be torn apart by faceless shadows descending from a war blimp and sending him plummeting to the earth. Moments of quiet beauty and soaring whimsy are constantly contrasted with fire and blood, never once letting you forget the darkness on the other side of the light. Jiro often dreams of meeting his idol, an Italian aerial engineer named Caprone, who intersperses his inspirational speeches with wistful ruminations on the nature of their craft and the path it inevitably leads down. There’s a train ride early on where Jiro’s pleasant train ride to Tokyo is smashed with the full force of an earthquake, and the animation used to realize the natural disaster damn near made me choke up with shock and horror. And the following sequence plays out without music, letting the ambient noise of despair, pain and desolation reverberate in your head, growing louder and louder until the characters finally reach a safe haven and the tension is cut with a heart-soaring melody. It’s never as brutal as, say, Grave of the Fireflies, and there is plenty of joy to be had, but you’re never fully able to forget what all this is in service of.

That, in a nutshell, is the great triumph of The Wind Rises. It’s a tale of equal parts joy and melancholy, beauty and ugliness, two sides of the same coin that cannot be separated from each other, much as we might wish. To create something beautiful, the film seems to posit, you accept the responsibility of what happens when that dream leaves your mind and enters the world. Creation is worth pursuing, but there will be sacrifices no matter how hard you try to avoid them. It’s a deeply personal expression from a creative genius looking back on the long, likely painful road that brought him to this point, taking stock of everything he’s achieved and whether or not the cost was worth it. Miyazaki has made many deeply resonant films in the past, but I don’t think he’s ever made one that feels this intimate and personal to his understanding of life. At times, it becomes so tender and trembling that you half want to look away in shame, fearing that you’re intruding upon something personal and private. But Miyazaki refuses to let your attention slip; at long last, he is telling his story, and much like every step on the journey that’s brought him to this point, he wants to believe that however painful it may be to bring to life, this is a story worth telling.

And on that level, he’s absolutely right. The Wind Rises is a truly beautiful film, never once wavering over the course of its two-hour runtime, a shining example of someone at the top of his game laying it all out on the table one last time. While it lacks the constantly explosive wonder of Ponyo, the animation is possibly the best it’s ever been, capturing a vision of a constantly moving life, motion and fluidity capturing the potency of every subtle movement, every grand vista. There’s an ever-present sense of awe and wonder, even with the darkness on the other side of the mirror, wonder for the beauty and sorrow of life in equal measure. Light dapples and streaks across the screen like wind, as if the essence of the universe itself is rushing by these characters as they seek to rise upon it into the sun. It’s an almost ethereal film at times, capturing a kind of beauty that blows by on a breeze leaving nothing in its wake but the memory that it ever existed at all. And whenever the planes take flight, in reality or imagination, you feel like you’re in the air. You feel pulled along right beside Jiro, right beside Miyazaki, as they rush headlong towards their dream, hoping to grasp it and pull it into the light. Not a detail is out of place, not a moment is wasted, and every frame captures something essential and impossible to quantify. In this film, Miyazaki is laying every ounce of beauty he has left to give out, even in the face of so much darkness, because he still has faith in the power that beauty preserves.

Perhaps it’s crass to read too deeply into what is clearly an intensely personal statement for risk of getting it wrong, but I can’t help it. I’ve always been obsessed with stories about storytelling, fiction that seeks to reach a deeper understanding of itself and its place in a greater context. I believe that the stories we tell are powerful, that they can affect us and transform us, that they can bring joy and sorrow to the world depending on how we choose to accept them. Miyazaki’s story isn’t just about his story, it’s the story of all his stories, of the blood and sweat and tears he and Studio Ghibli put into bringing these masterpieces to life. In a way, it almost feels like the perfect culmination of the entire Ghibli oeuvre up to this point, remixing and refitting countless old ideas and motifs into its very being. It has the high-flying whimsy of Kiki’s Delivery Service, Naussicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky, the anti-war poignancy of Grave of the Fireflies and Porco Rosso, the stunning animation of Spirited Away and Ponyo, the examination of the creative process of Whisper of the Heart, the uncertain optimism of Pom Poko, the surreal imagery of Howl’s Moving Castle, and the simple humanity of My Neighbor Totoro. This is the film Miyazaki was always building towards, the movie that captures everything of the stories he chose to tell, and the story of himself that he now gets to tell. And through it, he asks us to consider the power of our own stories, recognize the responsibility we have for them, and hope to find better and better ways to share that beauty with the world.

What criticisms I have are minor. There are a couple of scenes that go by kinda quickly, a romantic subplot that could’ve used more fleshing out, and that’s pretty much it. The Wind Rises is a triumph of the creative spirit, using reality to explore fiction and come to a greater understanding of the importance and impossibility of storytelling at a time when the stories we tell matter more than ever. If Miyazaki, like Jiro, truly just wished to create something beautiful, then all I can say is “mission accomplished”. Take a bow, sir. I hope retirement suits you well.