Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre!

★★★★☆

That’s right, I’m opening this rebuttal up in French. Before my next review, I wanted to give you my perspective on The Wind Rises by Hayao Miyazaki. David and I, y’know the two guys mentioned in the tagline, will be writing rebuttals anytime an assigned movie is given a rating of 2 stars or less. Last week, I had David watch this film, because I know he has a weakness for biopics in a way that I do not, and an animated biopic seemed like a rare treat. He did not like it. He raised a few fair points in his original review that I’d like to concede before I begin defending the movie.

The Wind Rises is a highly fictionalized movie. I did not know that when I assigned it and had to rewatch it with that new information. This really did harm my take on the movie because it’s easy to forgive some of the film’s other shortcomings if it is based on a true story. Jiro Horikoshi has almost no character arc, and I was willing to overlook that on my first viewing because this movie was about the real man. On this second viewing I had to accept this as a flaw of the movie. The other point David brought up that I have to agree with is that the plot is weak, in fact I would argue that there is almost no plot, only story, but I believe that was intentional.

There is a (I assume) very popular Japanese book titled The Wind Has Risen which was the other source of inspiration for this movie. The movie is dedicated equally to its author, Hori Tatsuo, and Horikoshi. Tatsuo had a reputation, according to Wikipedia, for being an impressionistic writer and producing plot-light to plotless books. The Wind Has Risen is about a young girl in a tuberculosis sanitorium in the mountains and is the direct inspiration for the parts of Jiro’s life that seemed pulled from thin air. It is also probably why Miyazaki decided to try and make a movie that mirrored the work of Tatsuo (who did die of tuberculosis) as an attempt to honor him.

Conceding the biopic title, and agreeing that there is very little plot to get excited about, this movie instead morphs to a character study about Jiro. My love for this movie is still rooted in this study. Jiro is an ultimately tragic figure who lets his philosophy blind him to the truth of everything happening around him. The title of Hatsuo’s book, and this movie, both stem from the French Paul Valéry poem quoted at the top of my review. The full line translates to: “The wind is rising! … We must try to live!” Jiro lives by this motto and allows its message to swallow him. Valéry includes a set of ellipses in the eponymous line that represents a hesitation. Jiro never thinks twice about pushing forward.

The wind that rises throughout this film is ultimately all of that life throws at us, the good and the bad.  First, Jiro’s eyesight is too weak for him to fulfill his dream of becoming a pilot. Jiro is present for an earthquake that threatens to wipe Tokyo off the map. He is anti-war in a country on the brink of a world war that he knows threatens to destroy his country. He falls in love with a woman who has tuberculosis. Through all of this, Jiro never wavers. He becomes an aeronautical engineer. He marries Naoko. He builds a plane that will ultimately wreak havoc in the war. He never gets everything he wants and the wind never dies down. Not since Job has a man had such bad luck in life and yet kept moving forward.

Even with his lot in life, the tragic part is how he ignores the obvious truths in front of him. Near the end of the movie, Jiro’s best friend tells him ‘We’re not arms merchants, we just want to build good aircrafts’ and he agrees with it. It is actually the next thing Jiro says after ‘Japan is going to blow up’. He can see the end of the path he is on but he brushes it off. He knows that wanting to build good planes doesn’t stop you from being an arms merchant but chooses to believe that those two things are mutually exclusive. This happens to him constantly throughout the movie. He takes Naoko in, knowing that it certainly gives her no chance of recovery. He kisses her, and drinks from her glasses, risking getting infected himself. He chooses not to live with the wind but to ignore it, ultimately resulting in him losing his wife and all of his aircrafts.

I have only started to scratch the service of the symbolism and themes running throughout this movie. It is the film equivalent of a poem. It focuses on the beauty of what’s at hand instead of a strong plot. It tries to say more with less. And, like poetry, it may not be for everyone. But it is for me. Go into this movie with an open mind and listen for the sound of wind. Wait to see if it is going to bring Jiro and his dreams closer together, or ultimately tear them apart.