Movie – The wind rises

Movie – The wind rises

Original title :"Kaze tachinu"

Score : 7/10

Year : 2013 (Japan) ; 2014 (France)

Director :  Hayao Miyazaki

Country : Japan

Language : Japanese

Duration :2h06

I enjoyed this movie’s art, mixing realism and cartoon drawings which didn’t shock me in their juxtaposition like they did for my spouse...

It has a lot of humor in the sequences of Jiro’s dreams; we follow the hero of this movie, from 1918 to 1945, his engineering course, first at Mitsubishi then as he worked for the army, and his research in an ultra-light airplane, and invention of the zero Hunters ...

Jiro this, however, is not totally biographical. Hayao Miyazaki who take his retirement after this last film, was inspired by the true Jiro Horikoshi and Tatsuo Hori, author of a new '' the wind rises '' published in 1936-37, making this filma ''biographical novel'' instead of a biopic... which is a shame because I would have preferred either a biopic or a fiction, rather than the mixture in which we have a  beautiful love story which is probably totally fictitious and yet told with great skill and poetry - worthy of Miyazaki, and with a super cute scene that reminded me of Romeo and Juliet in the balcony ... (without the suicide)

I liked the fluidity in the film, and minimalism of the dialogues which focused on those directly related to the protagonist ;  otherwise we see people conversing but with no sound- they are not important in history at that time.

Some scenes are downright huge ; the clouds are superbly well made, the water and reflections as well...

 

I also enjoyed the return of some characters and see the evolution of the protagonists, more or less real or invented, and it's frankly think about two things:

First, if it had not been shortsighted, what would it have been in history?

Secondly, it clearly demonstrates a certain detachment of engineers from thee world around them, they do not ask themselves too many questions about the purpose of their research and inventions, as they follow their inspiration and motivation- the rest is set aside , like ethics and human relations ...

A song in the film hurt my ears, which fortunately did not last (thank you!); although generally, the lyrics were adequate to the story, I didn’t like the song. ...

This movie received very mixed reviews; especially about the content on the Second World War ... one has to use critical thinking and not accept every single message in this (and other movies).