The Wind Rises - 2013

Hayao Miyazaki's farewell piece, The Wind Rises, is a masterpiece. With an already unbelievably high bar stemming from being the greatest director (director hardly seems sufficient, creator, writer) of animated films, plus the added weight of The Wind Rises being his final film, my expectations were tall.  They were met 100%.

The Wind Rises is a fictionalized biography of Jiro Horikoshi, an engineer during WW2 responsible for designing several fighter planes. An interesting side note: Jiro eventually designed the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane.  Miyazaki's dad worked for Miyazaki Airplane which made rudders used on the A6M Zero.  The film begins with Jiro as a boy, dreaming of becoming a pilot.  Jiro is too near-sighted to fly planes, but in a dream sequence he meets famous plane designer Giovanni Caproni whom tells Jiro to design planes, rather than pilot them.  The rest of the film depicts Jiro's journey throughout college, his career with Mitsubishi, his marriage, and the realization of his shared dream.

The Wind Rises feels like a thesis film for Miyazaki.  It has so many themes and elements packed into it, and they all work beautifully. It truly feels as if this is exactly the film Miyazaki wanted to end on, everything he's touched on in his career is here in full swing.  The more I think about the film the more I realize how much human emotion it encompasses.  It has everything ranging from realizing your dreams, to the realization that your dreams have caused a profound amount of pain and death, and the amount of pain, sacrifice, and determination involved to make it to that point.

The animation is remarkable, at several points I said "wow" aloud.  The dream sequences are unbelievably creative and imaginative, it almost feels like Miyazaki has had these great ideas for years and saved them for his final film.  If this truly is the last film Miyazaki makes, I'm glad this was his last.

A+