Miyazaki has always been obsessed with aeronautics, but he’s been just as consumed by various kinds of corruption, including that of his family at the hands of a workaholic father.
Miyazaki has always been obsessed with aeronautics, but he’s been just as consumed by various kinds of corruption, including that of his family at the hands of a workaholic father. Yes, “The Wind Rises” is a three-hankie melodrama that empathizes with a man who conceived of killing machines, but it’s one that Miyazaki devastatingly reframes into the story of someone struggling to justify their art in a world eager to condemn even its most beautiful dreams as weapons of war. At the time of its release, I was convinced that this bittersweet personal statement was too perfect a swansong for Miyazaki to bother making another film. In hindsight, however, “The Wind Rises” is just as clearly a film about why he’ll never be able to just put down his pencil and walk away forever — not when using it is the only way he knows how to draw air into his lungs. “The wind is rising!” the poet said. “We must try to live.” —DE