Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises)
But maybe Ghibli will stop producing films anyways, which makes my point moot. The latter would actually be sad, even though that would help my goal in trying to see every single one of their films. My love story with Ghibli is a complicated one, and I am most unsure about their newest films. Ironically, I liked “From up on poppy hill” (both a newer Ghibli and a relationship film and, to top it all, a war film). I thought it was positively unusual as it was slice of life about a girl waiting for her father with a little relationship drama added in. I can’t recall a Ghibli I liked without any supernatural elements, so I was surprised that I liked it. For me, it was outstanding in a long strong of Ghibli post-Spirited-Away films that left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth: I thought that The Cat Returns, Ponyo and Arrietty were all weird. Only Howl’s Moving Castle holds a special place in my heart and even that one seemed more style over substance for me.
Unfortunately, “Kaze Tachinu” was mostly a disappointment again. It’s not as bad as some of the other films, as I marveled over the dream sequences with all those fantastic airplanes, but I cringed at the latent war glorification. (Yeah yeah, there are all those warnings about war, but in the end, the main character is seen as a hero who surpassed the evil Germans with his amazing airplane designs). Speaking of the evil Germans, they managed to get some actual German speakers to say things like: “Zutritt nicht erlaubt! Das ist deutsches Eigentum” (or something along those lines). They even put in a completely needless scene of the Gestapo chasing a Jew. I don’t particularly appreciate that tu quoque attitude no matter whether it’s coming from Germany or Japan or anyone, and Ghibli films always irk me with these incredibly subtly political incorrect scenes.
Continuing along the lines of why this film was ridiculous, I think any good line would be ruined if it was spoken with a heavy Japanese accent. But the way that scene was shot is just too much. Not only was “Le vent se lève,… il faut tenter de vivre.” shown in writing at the beginning of the film, it was also said out loud by Hideaki Anno’s with a hideous accent and then translated into Japanese again by the Caproni character, not to mention that it’s the damn title of the film. There is so much pathetic emphasis put onto this sentence (which was ridiculous to begin with) that it almost discredits the film.
To be fair, that is only one small aspect in the entire film. More importantly, I have mixed feelings about Jiro’s relationship with his wife, which is all fiction to begin with. It may look very cute how Nahoko is holding Jiro’s hand while she sleeps and he works, it’s still a soulless relationship in which the guy is a traditional hero type and the girl is a demure damsel in distress, and significantly younger than him. I am not sure when was the last time I have seen such cookie cutter characters in a movie relationship. At the same time, there is something beautiful and pure about them together, I am just not sure if it’s a nice or a horrible illusion.
Despite all of that, I enjoyed the film. When we watched it, Pip and I carefully followed the list of airplanes shown in the film (they were all historic airplanes and depicted quite nicely) and had lots of fun while doing so. The airplane history aspect coupled with those lovely Ghibli-style dream sequences single-handedly saved the film for me and ultimately made me happy that I saw it. However, it blows my mind why anyone else would want to see the film. Even for a Ghibli fan, this film may not be all that great.