The Wind Rises: A - Movie Review Example

The Wind Rises: A Review The Wind Rises: A Review Details The Wind Rises Director: Hayao Miyazaki Writer: hayao Miyazaki Genre: Animated historical drama Release: Toho, Japan on 20th July, 2013 and Touchstone Pictures, United States of America on 21st February 2014. The original version of the film is in Japanese with English subtitles. There is also an English version which has been voiced by the likes of Emily Blunt and Joseph Gordon Levit and other characters. Plot The plot of the movie revolves around Jiro Horikoshi, an aeronautic engineer renowned for building Japanese war planes during the Second World War. Coined with fiction and romance the movie also touches on various Japanese historical occurrences (Miyazaki, 2013). The movie is about the story of Jiro Horikoshi, a young Japanese lad who dreams of becoming a pilot in 1918. His dream, however, fails due to his poor eyesight. Later on, he admires the work of Giovanni Battista, an Italian aircraft designer, a person he comes to know through reading. He interestingly dreams of meeting Giovanni and Giovanni telling him that it is better to design planes rather than fly them. Caproni, the illusions encourages Jiro to pursue his dream though from a different angle. He advices him that he should dream first followed by the reality (Miyazaki, 2013). Horikoshi later decides to study aeronautical engineering, a venture he undertakes at Tokyo Imperial University. He graduates from this school in 1927, after which he is employed by Mitsubishi, alongside his friend Kiro Honjo, who designs Mitsubishi G3M. While working at Mitsubishi, they are agitated by the Japanese lack of modern technology that makes their planes almost obsolete to a point of dejection by the army. Jiro is later sent to Germany to enhance his skills, learn on the modern technology and also get licensed to manufacture and fly Junker G.38. Jiro is promoted to a chief designer in 1932, where he designs Mitsubishi 1MF10 that fails and gets rejected again. It is at this instance that he decides to take a rest at a resort where he meets Nahoko, a girl he had met on a train on his way to the University. This time, they court and get married later on under the stewardship of a Hans Castorp, a German. His friendship with Castrop sees them realize his dreams by jointly getting involved in building of various aircrafts (Miyazaki, 2013). His friendship with the German lands him in trouble as he is later wanted by the police. He hides, but this time building the Mitsubishi A5M. On finishing his mission his wife’s health deteriorates and heads to near death. At the beginning of the Second World War, Jiro has become an accomplished designer whose planes are mainly used by the Japanese Army during the war. As the movie tends towards the end, Jiro, a pacifist, is not very appeased that his designs were used for the war. The most used aircraft during World War II by Japanese navy was the Zero Fighter, a design of Jiro. As put across during one of his dreams, Jiro’s dreams was to build beautiful airplanes, but that dream died with building warplanes that were eventually destroyed during the war (Miyazaki, 2013). Japanese History While on a train journey to Tokyo, Jiro encounters an earthquake that shakes everything up. The earthquake occurs just after he meets a maid by the name Nahoko, who breaks her leg and is rescued by Jiro. The earthquake is reminiscent the 1923, Great Kanto Earthquake. This is the first historical event that has been depicted in the movie. On a “Moment Magnitude Scale”, the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.9. Approximately 105,000 people succumbed to the disaster and over 111, 000 houses were burnt down in the whole Tokyo metropolitan. Over 200,000 Japanese residences were destroyed. The fire was so fierce mainly because most structures at that time were wooden. The Great Kanto Earthquake disaster consumed forty-seven percent of Japan’s GNP. Through the recovery process, Japan was put into a serious economic crisis (Schenckking, 2013). There is a scene in the movie where Jiro is heading to an aviation company in Nagoya where he observes a bank run. This was commonplace in 1927 during another serious economic crisis. Jiro goes on to struggle and produce better fighter air crafts in 1929 where another economic crisis hits the country leading to deflation, bankruptcies and millions of unemployment. At this point Japan was very poor but always struggling to get the military prowess and industrial power enjoyed by the west. The 1931 Manchuria invasion of Japan is brought about in the movie when Jiro, after failing in achieving the desired military aircraft, rests in a mountainside resort with where he meets Nahoko for the second time. Casttorp, the German traveller brought about this historical perspective as he quoted the mountainside as quite as compared to the atmosphere brought about by the Manchuria, the 1933 withdrawal of the League of Nations and the 1937 Sino-Japan War (Olson, 2001). The design of the zero fighters brings up the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. The plane responsible for the attack was a Mitsubishi A6M2, a zero fighter a plane that was designed by the real character depicted as Jiro in animation. This attack leads to the later United States nuclear hit-back at Hiroshima and Nagasaki that consumed thousands of Japanese nationals. Jiro’s meeting and love with Nahoko takes another historical perspective of the Tuberculosis epidemic in Japan. At the time of their meeting in between 1920s and 1940s, the tuberculosis epidemic was six times higher than the same in the United States at the time. The disease, which was incurable at the time, has been well highlighted in the animation, clearly showing the serious ness of the condition as it leads to Nahoko’s death. . The film character, Jiro,is himself a historical depiction of Rei-sen the creator of zero fighters that were used by Japanese militants during the Second World War. These planes killed thousands of American soldiers and at the same time thousands of Japanese soldiers succumbed to them. This, in consequence, is an issue that led to great controversy in the reception of the film as it brought the War memoirs back. The film has been able to ingeniously bring out the Japan of 1930s. It was a very poor country, haunted by a series if economic disasters and yet paying engineers like Jiro so much to prepare for a war. Many Japanese nationals were going hungry at a time the nation was spending billions in warfare preparation. Success of the movie In my view, the movie is a pronounced success in being an animated historical drama. In this genre, and according to The Wind Rises, Miyazaki succeeded in expressing Japanese struggle with technology in the 1930s. The poverty that engulfed the country, natural disasters, economic disasters and warfare calamities have been successfully highlighted in The Wind Rises. Other than the historical perspective that has very well been put across, one cannot fail to recognize Miyazaki’s ability to put on his themes. Jiro is a young near sighted Japanese boy who dreams of becoming a pilot. His sight fails him, but almost immediately meets Giovanni Caproni poignantly, and gets to know that he can build a plane, a dream that he achieves. This is an expression of the success that can befall a person who is willing to pursue their dream. Additionally, this has also happened to Japan as a nation by view of the poverty that befell the nation in 1930s to being the most industrialized nation in the world today. Military infatuation and its effect on family life, as has been the present day ideal of the west is also successfully brought out in the movie. Miyazaki has highlighted spouses whose focus is on their careers rather than family life. Jiro, immediately after marrying his spouse is so connected to his job that he has to be called once his wife suffers from critical tuberculosis. At this time, militarism had so much engulfed the Japanese government that most of the citizens were languishing in poverty. In the current world, The Wind Rises prompts us to wonder the manner in which talent is being used. Jiro dreamt of building beautiful planes but ended up building war planes that could lead to deaths of thousands (Olson, 2001). The film, therefore, was a success in achieving its course, be it historical, or thematic; the director really achieved his purpose in creating the movie. Conclusion The Wind Rises is an animation released in 2013 that was a great success as the last work of Hayao Miyazaki. The plot of the film, based on a young lad who dreams to be a pilot and ends up an aeronautic engineer successfully expounds the Japanese pre- World War II history. It takes viewers back to the 1920s and the struggles the country went through to when it started industrializing. The movie, though heavily criticized for its war premonitions can be categorized as some successful piece of thought by the director. References Miyazaki, H. (2013). The wind Arises. Japan:  Studio Ghibli. Schenckking, J. (2013). The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Chimera of National Reconstruction in Japan. Columbia: Columbia University Press. Olson, J. (2001). Historical Dictionary of the Great Depression, 1929-1940. 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