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Miyazaki delivers another beauty
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They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but few could justifiably question the beauty of a Hayao Miyazaki film. A revered master of animation, the Oscar-winning director/writer makes something as simple as a hazy sky so ravishing, it can take your breath away.
Miyazaki’s latest film, “The Wind Rises,” nominated for the animated feature Oscar, takes the concept of beauty’s subjectivity and addresses it in a way that’s touching, troubling, and above all, totally unique. If this is indeed Miyazaki’s swan song — he’s announced his retirement, but not everyone believes it — then it’s a worthy one, if perhaps not his most satisfying work.
What is beauty? Jiro, whom we first meet as a country boy in Japan, finds beauty in the design of an airplane. He yearns to be a pilot, but is nearsighted. In a dream, he encounters the famous Italian aeronautical engineer Giovanni Caproni, who tells him not to worry — it’s even better to build planes than to fly them.
Caproni is not a fictional character — and neither is Jiro. The film is based on Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who designed the Zero fighter plane used in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II. That’s where the film gets complicated. Some have asked why Miyazaki would focus on a man whose creation was ultimately used to kill so many.
One could also see the film as a pacifist statement — showing how a thing of beauty was turned into a killing machine. But Miyazaki has said he didn’t mean to be political, wanting simply to portray the story of someone who pursued his dream with passsion.
The film, produced by Miyazaki’s acclaimed Studio Ghibli, presents Jiro (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the English-language version) as a gentle soul. Heading to Tokyo to begin studies in engineering, he encounters a pretty girl on the train. She shares a French poem, and the line: “The wind is rising, we must try to live.”
They forge a connection, and then their train is caught up in a catastrophe — the Great Kanto Earthquake that rocked Japan in 1923. Jiro helps the girl make it home.
After university, Jiro is hired by Mitsubishi to design planes (his bosses are voiced by Martin Short and Mandy Patinkin). He and his friend, Honjo (John Krasinski) travel to Germany to study what engineers are doing there.
After he returns to Japan, Jiro again encounters the girl he met on the train and they fall in love.
As the film draws to a conclusion, Jiro says all he wanted to do was create something beautiful. It’s a feat director Miyazaki has achieved once again.
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