March 06, 2014
Out of the Park
Hayao Miyazaki's films are practically always solid examples of the animators craft, so to note that one is good is not news. However, this latest effort by the director is superlative even by his august standards.
Wind Rises is a seemingly odd choice for an animated film, being a fictionalized biopic about Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of Japan's fearsome "Zero" naval fighter of the Second World War.
A few dream sequences give Miyazaki an outlet for his sense of whimsy, as does the fact that Caproni's CA:60 actually existed (briefly). However, while the film covers a tumultuous period of Japanese history, the epic events of the era happen mainly in the background with the notable exception of the Great Kanto Earthquake, which is terrifyingly portrayed. The focus is very much on the life of a very decent gentleman who tries to give his dreams form...with a slide rule. Miyazaki weaves this tale into a touching romantic period drama that uses the medium to brilliantly bring to life the vastly different world that was Taisho and early Showa Japan. This film was clearly a labor of love for Miyazaki who both wrote and directed it. It is on a rather different level from his other films. Every lesson he's learned in animation since he started in 1963 is put to good effect in this film, often quite subtly.
If you get the chance, by all means see it. This film is in criminally limited release (and was given an absurd PG-13 rating) due to smoking as well as various other bugaboos of the eternally offended crowd. Disney is reportedly releasing it "at arms length" which is a very sad thing indeed, because this film is really quite exquisite.
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Hayao Miyazaki's films are practically always solid examples of the animators craft, so to note that one is good is not news. However, this latest effort by the director is superlative even by his august standards.
Wind Rises is a seemingly odd choice for an animated film, being a fictionalized biopic about Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of Japan's fearsome "Zero" naval fighter of the Second World War.
A few dream sequences give Miyazaki an outlet for his sense of whimsy, as does the fact that Caproni's CA:60 actually existed (briefly). However, while the film covers a tumultuous period of Japanese history, the epic events of the era happen mainly in the background with the notable exception of the Great Kanto Earthquake, which is terrifyingly portrayed. The focus is very much on the life of a very decent gentleman who tries to give his dreams form...with a slide rule. Miyazaki weaves this tale into a touching romantic period drama that uses the medium to brilliantly bring to life the vastly different world that was Taisho and early Showa Japan. This film was clearly a labor of love for Miyazaki who both wrote and directed it. It is on a rather different level from his other films. Every lesson he's learned in animation since he started in 1963 is put to good effect in this film, often quite subtly.
If you get the chance, by all means see it. This film is in criminally limited release (and was given an absurd PG-13 rating) due to smoking as well as various other bugaboos of the eternally offended crowd. Disney is reportedly releasing it "at arms length" which is a very sad thing indeed, because this film is really quite exquisite.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
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1
"Wind Rises" was robbed a the Academy Awards. It is truly a work of magnificent art and the best movie of a true master film maker. I've seen it twice, once subtitled and the other dubbed and the movie works. Miyazaki has never made the same movie twice and he dealt with a very touchy subject( the engineering of warplanes) in a way that showed the passion of engineering while not rubbing our face in the stupidity of war. As an engineer I think that "Winds" may be the best engineering movie ever made and certainly the best we've seen lately.
Posted by: Jcarlton at Fri Mar 7 20:41:45 2014 (KY9EE)
2
According to Wikipedia, Miyazaki's father was a defense contractor who worked on the Zero (ran a company that supplied rudders). I hope Disney gets the discs released soon, as I'm sure the movie is a labor of love on multiple levels.
Posted by: Ranger Rick at Fri Mar 7 23:33:08 2014 (XTV7r)
3
Telling a movie about a plane designer has been done before. In this case it was about R.J. Mitchell, who designed the Spitfire.
I'm not saying Miyazaki is plagiarizing, just pointing out that it isn't a unique concept.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sat Mar 8 09:05:13 2014 (+rSRq)
4
Nobody in the movies loves the Wright Brothers. And it's sad, because they did all kinds of cool things and they had cool family and nifty friends. But noooo, all they get are time travel episodes with gratuitous mountains.
Btw, all you engineers should visit the Engineers' Club downtown on the riverfront if you ever get to Dayton (as well as the standard Wright and aviation sites of interest). It's awesomely engineered, to the point that it's eerie how everything in the building just works exactly right and fails to have annoying features.
Btw, all you engineers should visit the Engineers' Club downtown on the riverfront if you ever get to Dayton (as well as the standard Wright and aviation sites of interest). It's awesomely engineered, to the point that it's eerie how everything in the building just works exactly right and fails to have annoying features.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Sat Mar 8 20:27:04 2014 (mpHLh)
5
If you get the chance, by all means see it.
Thanks for the tip. The Toronto International Film Festival had a Studio Ghibli fest back around Christmastime; I'll keep watching their website to see if they show The Wind Rises.
Disney is reportedly releasing it "at arms length" which is a very sad thing indeed, because this film is really quite exquisite.
The distribution deal Studio Ghibli cut with Disney strikes me as a mixed blessing; we do get wider distribution of Studio Ghibli movies in North America, but we have to put up with dub-only cinema releases and a certain degree of Disneyfication (for lack of a better word)*, and we also have to put up with the sort of moralistic hand-wringing mentioned in the NYT article. OTOH, this "arms length" release is actually an improvement for Disney; they didn't distribute From Up on Poppy Hill at all in North America (although they did release it in France, which apparently hasn't yet been overrun by busybodies).
(* BTW, I still think the clowns who stuck that hip-hoppish song in the closing credits of The Secret World of Arrietty should be horsewhipped...)
Thanks for the tip. The Toronto International Film Festival had a Studio Ghibli fest back around Christmastime; I'll keep watching their website to see if they show The Wind Rises.
Disney is reportedly releasing it "at arms length" which is a very sad thing indeed, because this film is really quite exquisite.
The distribution deal Studio Ghibli cut with Disney strikes me as a mixed blessing; we do get wider distribution of Studio Ghibli movies in North America, but we have to put up with dub-only cinema releases and a certain degree of Disneyfication (for lack of a better word)*, and we also have to put up with the sort of moralistic hand-wringing mentioned in the NYT article. OTOH, this "arms length" release is actually an improvement for Disney; they didn't distribute From Up on Poppy Hill at all in North America (although they did release it in France, which apparently hasn't yet been overrun by busybodies).
(* BTW, I still think the clowns who stuck that hip-hoppish song in the closing credits of The Secret World of Arrietty should be horsewhipped...)
Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great at Sun Mar 9 00:04:16 2014 (Aspt2)
6
@Peter:
Do you mean cinematic releases only? I ask because 'Poppy Hill got a Disney home-video-only release Stateside. When I borrowed it from the local library last fall, it turned out fairly well compared to some other Disney releases of Ghibli films.
Do you mean cinematic releases only? I ask because 'Poppy Hill got a Disney home-video-only release Stateside. When I borrowed it from the local library last fall, it turned out fairly well compared to some other Disney releases of Ghibli films.
Posted by: Ranger Rick at Sun Mar 9 13:01:14 2014 (XTV7r)
7
@Rick: So Disney did release From Up on Poppy Hill on DVD in the US? I was going by the IMDB company credits page, which shows GKids and Cinedigm Entertainment Group (two companies I'd never heard of before) as the North American cinema and DVD distributors, respectively. I saw the movie at the TIFF film fest I mentioned in my first comment (with
subtitles, although the GKids cinema release is listed by IMDB as
dub-only), and I haven't seen the DVD on sale at any bricks-and-mortar
store. There are some themes in From Up on Poppy Hill that I thought Disney wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole:
Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great at Sun Mar 9 16:22:06 2014 (Aspt2)
8
Disney released the rights to Guerrilla Kids which produced and distributed the English version themselves. They also have acquired Grave of the Fireflies.
GKids has additionally secured some second run theatrical release rights for some of the Ghibli films from Disney, which I find remarkable
GKids has additionally secured some second run theatrical release rights for some of the Ghibli films from Disney, which I find remarkable
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Mar 9 22:50:16 2014 (DnAJl)
9
Took my wife and son to see it last weekend. Such a nice film, and such an understated and well-handled approach to the topics of tragedy and war.
I found the music slightly repetitive... but the visual quality was off the charts.
I found the music slightly repetitive... but the visual quality was off the charts.
Posted by: kduncan at Mon Mar 10 18:05:26 2014 (c/F3T)
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