The Wind Rises/風立ちぬ [Kaze Tachinu] (2013) - Miyazaki's beautiful but languid last film

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The North-American poster for Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises is very zealous in making us recall the directors past glories

Our hero Horikoshi has had a great interest in airplanes since childhood and grows up to become a plane designer as planned, while his country Japan enters the lunacy of World War II.

The Wind Rises is the swansong of Japanese animation master writer-director Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke/Mononoke-hime (1997)), who retired in its wake. As an innocent-looking animation, it is an odd bird; too adult for most children, and too conflict-averse and languid for most adults. It is clear that Miyazaki has sought to make an uplifting, beautiful film without the horrors of war or any darker, more complex nuances in the characters, - and the film is then set in relation to the two world wars. The plan thereby comes to seem like a feeble tripping around the real dilemmas.
The Wind Rises is still worth seeing, because it is a sweepingly beautiful animation with tremendously fine music (by Joe Hisaishi (Ponyo/Gake no ue no Ponyo (2008)) and sensory sound design (by Koji Kasamatsu (Ponyo). It is a farewell to a master who has simply grown too soft with age. It is based on Miyazaki's own same-titled 2009-10 manga and is a fictional biopic of Jiro Hirokoshi, the maker of two Mitsubishi airplanes used by Japan during WWII, inspired by Tatsuo Hori's same-titled 1937 short story.

Related reviews:

Hayao Miyazaki: Howl's Moving Castle/ハウルの動く城 [Hauru no Ugoku Shiro] (2004) - Miyazaki's hugely successful, gibberish fantasy
Spirited Away/千と千尋の神隠し [Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi] (2001) - Miyazaki's highly Japanese, enormously weird story of a girl

 

Watch an official trailer for the film in the English dub version here

 

Cost: 30 mil. $

 Box office: 136.4 mil. $

=  Big hit

[The Wind Rises was released July 20 (Japan) and runs 126 minutes. Miyazaki originally wanted to make a Ponyo sequel and thought his Wind Rises manga unfit for children, until a staff member said to him that "children should be allowed to be exposed to subjects they are unfamiliar with." The film opened #25 in 21 theaters to a 0.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked in 496 theaters at #13 and grossed 5.2 mil. $ (3.8 % of the total gross.) The film's biggest market by far was its native Japan with 119.5 mil. $ (87.6 %). The 2nd largest was France with 5.4 mil. $ (4 %), and North America was the 3rd largest. The film was nominated for the Best Animation Oscar, which it lost to Frozen, and the corresponding Golden Globe, also lost. The Wind Rises is certified fresh at 88 % with a 7.9 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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