Setting his story in the years before World War II adds weight to Miyazaki’s melancholy vision.
Hayao Miyazaki has a new film out now, but this was conceived and designed as his last before retirement, and it’s undeniably the work of a master looking back at his career. After all, it is about a perfectionist, a World War II airplane designer, who seeks what was once considered impossible: soaring above the clouds on what one character calls “beautiful dreams.” Setting his story in the years before World War II adds weight to Miyazaki’s melancholy vision. After all, we know that these dreams will lead to nightmares, and Miyazaki took some flak for one of the few times in his career for not making this film sufficiently antiwar. So much of Ghibli’s catalogue has been so clearly anti-violence that this is a somewhat myopic reading of this film, and it dismisses the ambition of its story and beauty of its visuals. The Wind Rises contains some of Miyazaki’s most striking compositions, alternately realistic and fantastical. It is about a dreamer who is forced to be a realist. In other words, it’s about its creator too.