Kaze Tachinu (New Hayao Miyazaki film)

[Guardian Enzo]

Kaze Tachinu gets anime a place at the table with an Oscar nomination. Good news all around.

[Last Sinner]

Saw it today.

Spoiler for sealed in case you want to see it completely green:

Nice to see Miyazaki tackle something more risky in his swansong. Handles the more dangerous material fairly well for the greater part, although at times it was perhaps too lightly handled.

The core themes of 'the wind is rising. We must yearn to live' and 'All I wanted to do was make something beautiful' certainly ring true. Horikoshi certainly was a dreamer and lived in the moment - in work and with his fictional love interest. He never able to see what his decisions would ultimately amount to. He certainly didn't intend such an end for his work - too many were stuck in his situation. He deserves some sympathy.

Nahoko is definitely a necessary element for the film. She provides an emotional context that gives Horikoshi elements of humanity and personality that make the film strike closer to the heart. It's certainly tragic, yet compelling, pure and something that is nice to see at long last from Miyazaki. (Doesn't quite hit Shinkai levels in that regard, but he did well)

There are three issues I have with the film. Firstly, the pacing early on is rather slow - it took about halfway through for me to finally be immersed in the 'live in the moment' vibe of the film. The lack of characters to bond with in the first half was also an issue. Finally, while Miyazaki takes a stand against wartime Japan, the ending is too abrupt and handles things too lightly.


That said, still a good film and nice to see Miyazaki step out of dreamland in his finale. Not his best but a worthy end to a career of one of the best.

8.25/10.

[blakstealth]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

Kaze Tachinu gets anime a place at the table with an Oscar nomination. Good news all around.

Would've been great if it won, too.

[Guardian Enzo]

Yeah (especially as my friend did work on the award campaign) but they were pretty resigned to Frozen winning. Getting the nomination was a moral victory.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Eh... Frozen very much deserved its Oscar win, both in terms of storytelling and technical achievement. That's not meant to be a slight on Kaze Tachinu. And, more importantly, Hayao Miyazaki is already an Oscar winner, so it's not as important to give him another one. But it means very much more for Disney, as it's an acknowledgement of how much better the studio has become in recent years.

[DragoonKain3]

I dunno if I should be thanking Miyazaki for his making the fictionalized love interest of his supposed final film be an osananajimi, or be cursing him for pulling a Shinkai. I mean it was a very emotional film that had me teary eyed at multiple parts (especially both the reunions, the wedding, and the letter), but being depressed after the movie isn't exactly a comforting feeling. XD

What, this film was supposed to be about planes/flying? I don't know what you guys are talking about.

[Aquifina]

I just saw Kaze Tachinu on the big screen in the US, and boy was it a delight (not sure if that's the right word, considering it's bittersweet ending).

Due to time constraints, I saw the dub, and was pleasantly surprised. The dubs for Ghibli films rarely *suck*, but while I will make sure to see the sub, this is perhaps the only dub I've seen where the lead's American voice acting seemed to do full justice to the character. Gordon-Levitt's Jiro is superb--he projects Jiro's calm confidence and competence (the consummate engineer), but he also adds just the right amount of emotion when required.

I loved the metaphor of the wind that runs through the whole film, and how fitting for it to be connected to a film about aviation! How the wind brings the characters together, but how fleeting it also is. How it fits a film about the impermanence of dreams, and how easily they can turn into nightmares. Jiro's first dream is denied him, due to his poor eyesight; he builds a beautiful airplane, but sees that dream become a nightmare before his very eyes.

Spoiler for Just in case:

The wind brings him love--the dream that comes unbidden and is all the more previous for it--but that too is taken from him all too soon.

I understand the discomfort the film has caused with regards to the looming issue of the war, but Miyazaki's defense, I think he's quite honest up front about how Jiro's dreams are closely linked to airplanes as weapons. Perhaps Jiro (the character, not the person) is guilty of letting the art of aircraft design become captured by Japanese militarism, but beyond the thorny issue of individual moral responsibility in wartime Japan, aren't weapons like the Zero deeply human in that they embody in themselves both beauty and malice at the same time? In the same way that the metaphor of the wind reminded me of the metaphor of human generations as leaves dispersed by the wind in the Iliad, I thought of Achilles' shield in the same poem--another piece of art that was also a weapon of war.

But even if our dreams all too easily turn into nightmares, we must keep on living--and realize for all its ills, life is worth living because of things like art and love, however bittersweet those endings may be.

[Infinite Zenith]

Anyone know when exactly the BD/DVDs are coming out? I'm dying to see this, and our local cineplex was being quite unreasonable, doing only one screening in the middle of exam season when I couldn't go.

[TinyRedLeaf]

I finally got around to watching the movie on the big screen today.

I liked the film, and found it to be a very unusual Miyazaki movie, a major departure from his previous works. It was very personal and highly sentimental, and it's clearly aimed at adults. Porco Rosso is the only other Miyazaki film I can think of that is in much the same vein. Unsurprisingly, Kaze Tachinu borrows many visual cues from the earlier movie, especially the streams of planes flying towards the high heavens.

I've deliberately avoided recent reviews of the movie so as to keep an open mind going into the theatre today. Sure enough, I've found that a number of people have criticised the apparent glossing over of the war and the celebration of Japanese nationalism, the drive to strengthen the country through a furious ambition to catch up with the more technologically advanced West. A good friend of mine felt let down by the movie's political correctness. To be sure, I myself had raised such concerns earlier.

But focusing on just those two themes alone would seem to me to be missing the larger point of the film. I see Kaze Tachinu as very clearly a farewell film.

One line in particular stood out for me: "An artist is creative for only 10 years."

To me, that's totally Miyazaki saying it's over — he has nothing left to tell. He's had his moment of glory and lived his time in the sun to the fullest, and now it's time to move on.

In that sense, the movie's theme song, Hikoukigumo (Vapour Trail), is a fitting tribute to the story's key message: Life is short. Seize the day. Cherish every moment. Carry no regrets.

Or, in other words: "The wind rises. We must attempt to live."


Overall, Kaze Tachinu is a lovely film. It's nowhere near as profound as either Mononoke Hime or Sen to Chihiro Kamikakushi, but it was deeply moving in its own way, especially when you are aware of the context of the story and background of its creator.

In many ways, Kaze Tachinu is like the spiritual successor to Porco Rosso, much like Mononoke Hime was for Nausicaa.


EDIT:

By the way, I realised only later that the plane Jiro Horikoshi was working on throughout the movie wasn't the A6M Zero fighter, but rather its predecessor, the A5M Claude. Or, to be more precise, it was the plane's prototype, the Ka-14, which did in fact feature the inverted gull-wing design portrayed in the movie. Just thought I should leave this note here, in case people are wondering why Miyazaki "fictionalised" the look and design of Japan's most famous warplane.

[Vegard Aune]

Originally Posted by ForwardUntoDawn

Anyone know when exactly the BD/DVDs are coming out? I'm dying to see this, and our local cineplex was being quite unreasonable, doing only one screening in the middle of exam season when I couldn't go.

It was just announced yesterday. The Japanese DVD/BD (which also comes with both the English dub and subtitles) will be released on the 18th of June, along with the oh-so-overdue BluRay release of Spirited Away.
Link just to prove that this isn't an April Fool's joke.

...And here I had sorta assumed that this movie would be released alongside The Tale of Princess Kaguya, whereas Spirited Away would come out together with Ocean Waves... (Because they seem to have this pattern of releasing one really successful movie alongside one of the less popular ones... So Spirited Away being released together with Ocean Waves, finally clearing out Ghibli's backlog of BluRay-releases only seemed to make sense to me.) Oh well, I suppose this pattern also makes sense.

[Aquifina]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Sure enough, I've found that a number of people have criticised the apparent glossing over of the war and the celebration of Japanese nationalism, the drive to strengthen the country through a furious ambition to catch up with the more technologically advanced West. A good friend of mine felt let down by the movie's political correctness. To be sure, I myself had raised such concerns earlier.

A recurring theme of the movie is the problem of Japan's backwardness, but the sequence involving the impoverished young children who refuse the cake from Jiro was a pretty harsh testimony on misplaced national resources. I think it's Jiro's colleague who comments on the vast amounts of money being used by them to build military aircraft, when so many ordinary Japanese are living in relative poverty.

I think it's a profound misinterpretation to see the film as even remotely nationalist--the film is obviously anti-war and pacifist in its inclinations. Japan's war effort is portrayed as incomprehensibly pointless, its secret police as both stupid and malicious (they nearly detain the country's most talented aviation engineer), and Jiro indicates at multiple times his preference that aircraft be unarmed. And in the end, the war causes everything to "fall apart."

If there's a moral problem in the film, it may be that it focuses so closely on Jiro as an isolated individual that it overly isolates him from the larger military machine he's working for. It's certainly open to question as to whether or not Jiro's dreams as art thus have an inherent value that transcend even the destructive (or even evil) purposes to which his art was put to use, and which made his art even possible. I personally think the movie's portrayal works, but that reflects my own assumptions about individual moral agency in an authoritarian society, and my own comfort level around the associated panoply of devices and tools associated with war--but I can certainly understand why some would see Jiro as far more complicit in his nightmare than Miyazaki wants us to believe.

But as a endorsement of any kind of militarism? I think that's a pretty profound misunderstanding of the film. Indeed, I would argue that the film doesn't even have a neutral and realistic portrayal of military organization and innovation, although that was hardly a problem for me, since it wasn't the film's goal.

[bbee]

Watched it a few hours ago at the Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam. First time seeing anime in the theater, didn't want to miss it since it is Miyazaki's last film.
I should probably mention that I'm a Ghibli fan, but I haven't been profoundly impressed by anything that's come from the studio since Spirited Away. Arrietty and Poppy Hill were both very good, but they too did not quite reach the 'comprehensively amazing' level of their films from the past century.

Kaze Tachinu is, in my opinion, a new low. While it may have some merit as a historical account or as a fictionalized biopic, taken as a story, it completely fails to deliver.

The entire film is far too drawn out: 30 minutes could have been cut from the first half, and 15 from the second, without changing the nature of the film in any way.
There is virtually no depth to any of the characters, and this is an achievement in and of itself, considering that the first hour of the film is spent following Jirou's progression as an engineer. Yet I am left feeling like I don't know or understand the man in the slightest (all we are really told is he really likes to design planes). All the other characters are ancillary and feel entirely one dimensional.
The extensive use of dream sequences is both annoying and unnecessary. Every single sequence follows the same recipe, and for this reason all but one could have easily been omitted.
What pathos there is in the star-crossed love story is never really played out. The lovers go from virtual strangers to marriage proposal in what feels like five minutes; so jarring and unexpected was the proposal that the entire audience in the theater was laughing when it happened. We don't ever see Jirou and Naoko exchange more than a few words in any given conversation. The love story also fails to end with the appropriate emotional delivery; instead it peters out in another superfluous half-dream sequence.
There is no real narrative to the story; no actual literary progression, merely a chronological one. The story is more chronicle than memoir.
Anno Hideaki was a terrible choice for the Jirou VA. He has a very mature-sounding voice, so much so that the moment I heard him speak as the young Jirou, I wondered if it was someone in the background I was supposed to be hearing. There is an interview with Miyazaki up on YouTube where he explains how he came to choose Hideaki, and how he 'waved away' the many objections he heard about this choice. I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but if you can, see the dub instead; it's likely to be less distracting.

All in, the film feels like a legandary director choosing to do what he likes to do most, animate planes; planes flying, crashing, being built, people walking on planes, around planes, drawing planes..
Miyazaki himself calls the film 'something different', so don't go into it expecting to experience anything like you may have experienced form his previous films. Sadly, short of the wonderful animation, it's very hard to find any actual merit to the film. So much so, in fact, that it's little surprise that when people talk about the film, they latch on to supposed historical insensitivities.
I am left in awe of Miyazaki-sensei's early work, and with even higher high hopes for Princess Kaguya.

[Bri]

Saw it today in the cinema. It's a beautiful movie on the process of creative effort and the price to be paid. One of Ghibli's finest efforts in my opinion.

Definitely not one of the most accessible Ghibli movies and it requires a bit of patience as this movie refuses to be rushed. It also helps to have an appreciation for aviation.

Where Miyazaki is often nostalgic for the era of his youth, this movie is very critical of pre-war Japan, often in the scenes where the second source, the Thomas Mann novel is referenced. He doesn't spare the artist either. The main character is from a privileged background and is absorbed by living his dream. While he is aware of the cost to both society and his personal life he is selfish like any great artist even though the rewards and achievements are short lived.

[psycho bolt]

The movie felt different than other Miyazaki films. It felt somewhat restrictive with the historical background, although he tried to compensate that with the dreams and the side story. This may be the first Miyazaki movie where I find the female protagonist character rather lacking, considering his past feminist views.

[omimon]

I just saw the film and holy shit was it good. Despite what others says here I actually think the love side-story was the stronger part. The reunion was done perfectly and the wedding had me on the edge of my seat. When Naoko left I was pretty devastated, I really wanted them to be together but I guess when you have a deadly disease in the mid-early 20th century you are pretty fucked.

10/10 no questions.

[AnimeFan188]

Watch Hayao Miyazaki animate the last shot of his career:

"This excerpt from The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness—a new documentary about the
legendary Studio Ghibli—shows anime master Hayao Miyazaki drawing the last shot of the last
film of his career, The Wind Rises. It was precisely during the shooting of this documentary that
Miyazaki decided to retire from filmmaking."

See:

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/watch-haya...826/+caseychan

[Haak]

I just watched this film now. What a great, great film. You know after Arrietty and From Up on Poppy Hill, I had lost a lot of faith in Ghibli. I didn't like either film and considered them overrated too. But this film has well and truly restored my faith in Studio Ghibli. The romance between Jiro and Naoko was wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time. I think Jiro's ultimate achievement ended up being a little anticlimactic in comparison but it was a great to watch his journey through the world of aviation.