The Wind Rises (Kaze tachinu)

THE WIND RISES (KAZE TACHINU) (Hayao Miyazaki, 2013)

It is said that Alfred Nobel hoped he might bring about an end to war by inventing dynamite. The explosive would cause mutual destruction and thus deter combat. Nobel’s hypothesis, whether apocryphal or not, was proven grossly incorrect.  The unintended consequences of creation also come into play in THE WIND RISES, writer-director Hayao Miyazaki’s fictionalized and animated biography of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed Japan’s Zero fighter.

Airplanes captivate Jiro (Hideaki Anno) so much that he often imagines conversations with Italian plane designer Giovanni Battista Caproni.  Too nearsighted to be a pilot, he sets his focus on becoming an aeronautical engineer.  Jiro is single-minded in his work and becomes a golden boy at the Mitsubishi Internal Combustion Engine Co. between World Wars I and II.  He is given time to let his mind roam and sent to Germany to see the all-metal airframes that the Japanese hope to use as they develop new fighters. Although Jiro experiences setbacks, he continues to dream of the beautiful flying machine that he will bring into reality.

A verse from a Paul Valéry poem--”The wind is rising! We must try to live.”--begins the film, provides its title, and is mentioned regularly throughout.  The quotation describes Jiro’s mindset as he endures his country’s poverty, an earthquake, war, and a tragic romance with Naoko Satomi (Miori Takimoto).  Terrible things happen and are on the horizon, but there is beauty and wonder to behold as well.  Just as the wind can inflict destruction, so too can it spread life.  

For Jiro the plane he is trying to perfect embodies mathematically elegant design that enables sailing among the clouds like in his childhood visions.  In actuality his achievement becomes a killing machine.  THE WIND RISES suggests that Jiro is a dreamer who isn’t ignorant of what he is creating but is susceptible to going about his work with an idealized conception of its purpose.     To Miyazaki the great sorrow is in lovely inventions being perverted into agents of death and ruination.  Technological advances are not inherently moral or immoral.  The enormous challenge, one that is often failed, is to choose to use such discoveries for the good.

THE WIND RISES is purportedly Miyazaki’s final film.  If so, it presents a fitting summary of his loves and concerns.  It celebrates ingenuity and imagination, as when Jiro observes the curve of mackerel bones and applies natural design to make a better frame for his plane.  It bemoans how militarism and economic forces can harm the health of the people and the environment.  No villain exists in THE WIND RISES other than the destructive human instinct.  For all of his enthusiasm about the wonderful things humanity might dream up, Miyazaki worries to what end they will be employed. The bittersweet tone is not intended to discourage progress but to inspire mindfulness in how innovations are implemented.  The verse his film quotes implies that obstacles will always be in the way of happiness, yet it is worth striving to grasp whatever grace exists and resist the forces of doom.   

Grade: A

From Up on Poppy Hill (Kokuriko-zaka kara)

FROM UP ON POPPY HILL (KOKURIKO-ZAKA KARA) (Goro Miyazaki, 2011)

“Was ist das Leben ohne Liebesglanz?”, a quotation from Friedrich Schiller’s WALLENSTEIN’S TOD, is scribbled on a clubhouse wall in the foreground of a late scene in FROM UP ON POPPY HILL (KOKURIKO-ZAKA KARA).  The passage translates as “What is life without the light of love?”  Although the rhetorical question goes uninterpreted on-screen, the sentiment within it informs every moment of the animated romantic drama.  

Each morning outside her family’s hilltop boarding house Umi Matsuzaki (Masami Nagasawa) raises signal flags in memory of her father, a captain whose supply ship sank during the Korean War.  The high school junior’s messages aren’t intended for any of the boats in the harbor, but someone passing by on a tugboat notices and publishes a poem about Umi’s daily ritual in the school newspaper.  Needing to devote time outside of classes to maintaining the home for her siblings and lodgers, especially with her mother studying abroad, Umi isn’t used to having attention directed her way.  

To her surprise she begins bonding with classmate Shun Kazama (Jun’ichi Okada), who helps run the school paper.  At first she’s unimpressed with the stunt he pulls to draw attention to the pending demolition of the Latin Quarter clubhouse, but his respect for the past impresses her.  In 1963 Japan they stand in opposition to a cultural movement that seeks to move forward by ignoring history and, in some instances, tearing it down in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics.  Umi and Shun spearhead a plan to rally their fellow students to clean up the clubhouse and reveal the dusty, creaky building as a beautiful place worth preserving.

Love is eternal in FROM UP ON POPPY HILL.  It is represented not only in the attraction two people feel when together but also through a gesture intended for someone who has passed.  Love is progress that honors history and nature rather than spreading destruction in the name of advancement.  Dealing with themes familiar in the work of his father Hayao Miyazaki, who co-writes with Keiko Niwa, director Goro Miyazaki guides a sweet and delicate coming of age tale for the main characters and their country after World War II.  

The sweep of vintage melodrama is well-suited for the volatile feelings stirred up in teenage romance and a time of national transition, yet for all of the strong emotions elicited in FROM UP ON POPPY HILL, it adopts a determinedly practical mindset about confronting the plot’s obstacles.  Rather than minimizing the stakes, this logical approach enhances the potential tragedy in personal and cultural changes.

FROM UP ON POPPY HILL’s gorgeous animation is devoted to bringing out the subtlety in interactions instead of imagining elaborate setpieces.  Slight variations in expressions carry and expand the emotional current in a manner more associated with live-action films.  Miyazaki’s ability to coax such understated performances out of the drawings and voice acting stands as the film’s major achievement.  

Grade: A

(FROM UP ON POPPY HILL is now available in a Blu-ray and DVD combo pack that includes the original Japanese-language track and an English-language dub.)

My Neighbor Totoro

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (TONARI NO TOTORO) (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)

In no time at all sisters Satsuki (Noriko Hidaka) and Mei (Chika Sakamoto) enjoy exploring the new home they moved into with their father (Shigesato Itoi) in MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO. They laugh about its less than pristine condition and are intrigued by the dust bunnies--or soot sprites, as an elderly woman (Tanie Kitabayashi) nearby calls them--that scatter when they throw open the doors and windows to long-closed rooms.  This new place suits them fine, although they’d prefer for their hospital-bound mother (Sumi Shimamoto) to have joined them already.

While Satsuki is at school and her father works in his office, four-year-old Mei wanders around the garden where she spots two small, unfamiliar creatures.  She chases them into the forest and encounters a much larger one that also resembles an egg-shaped cat and rabbit hybrid.  Mei tells her sister and father that she met a totoro, or a troll from one of her storybooks.  She wants to introduce them but is unable to find the way back to the spirits.  The totoro reappear from time to time to enhance the girls’ appreciation of nature and to comfort them when distressed.

As a hangout movie for kids, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO pleases with its easygoing pace, curiosity about the natural world, and sweet spirit.  It’s not quite a plotless film, but there’s an ambling feel to the unfolding story, as though these are just a few days plucked from the stream of Satsuki and Mei’s time.  They play, they learn, and they rest. Discovering the totoro is as and no more noteworthy than spotting any other woodland animal.  

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO lacks a villain, although the illness of the girls’ mother is a concern to the youngsters.  Here again writer-director Hayao Miyazaki takes a different tack, choosing not to impart major lessons or have his characters pursue self-actualization.  Instead he portrays such a matter as part of life rather than an all-consuming worry.  The children fret but are reassured by both parents and the old woman who sometimes looks over them.  

Miyazaki characterizes the children as children in all of their brash, inquisitive, creative, and vulnerable ways.  MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO respects where kids are in their development and provides them an unhurried space to continue to explore at their own speed.  Not much happens, yet every day is an adventure.  Few films understand childhood in such terms and present it in such beautiful imagery.  

Grade: B