The Wind Rises received widespread criticism even before its release; many condemned Miyazaki’s topic of choice, claiming that he was trying to glorify machines that were the cause of much carnage and destruction during the war. I have read passionate reviews criticising the film and its ‘blatant disregard’ for the atrocities committed by the Japanese during the Second World War. While not extremely loud and clear (relative to the likes of Nausicaa and Mononoke) Miyazaki’s pacifist message still rings throughout the film; Castorp, a character in the film, repeatedly condemns the war and its futility. In Horikoshi’s encounters with Caproni, the latter refers to Horikoshi’s quest as a dream for beauty and not, he emphasises, tools of war or moneymaking. We feel Horikoshi’s abject loss as he laments the ill fate of his planes. The movie ends with scenes of destruction brought about by the planes, along with comment that ‘not a single (plane) came back.’ (Interestingly, Miyazaki’s family was the owner of a business that sold spare parts to zero planes during the second world war, a fact that Miyazaki has openly admitted to have felt discomfort and remorse for.) What exactly, then, is Miyazaki’s message?
The Wind Rises’ genius lies in the fact that it transcends the simple moral debate between forgiving vs condemning Horikoshi’s deeds; instead miyazaki sheds light on Horikoshi’s world, through which we seek our own answers. One of the greatest hallmark of Miyazaki’s films, and a trait that is most telling of his capacity for empathy, is that his ‘villains’ are rarely irrationally evil and one dimensional; there is no Evil Stepmother, nor is there a mad woman bent on creating fur coats from dalmatians. In most cases Miyazaki shows neither explicit support nor outright disdain towards his villains, rather he elegantly exposes us to the moral ambiguity behind every struggle. Much of the discomfort one experiences while viewing The Wind Rises is derived from the fact that Horikoshi, the hero of the film, potentially doubles up as the unsuspecting villain. The viewer struggles - and invariably fails - to reconcile his desire for Horikoshi to succeed in his quest and the horrific ramifications of the aforementioned success. The film acknowledges that a true conflict is never just black and white. Horikoshi’s struggle was terribly real, and for that it was made all the more harrowing and beautiful.
Horikoshi’s character is an interesting one. The film starts off with him rescuing a stranger from bullies, and he follows on to save Naoko and her maid during an earthquake; in both circumstances he revealed nothing if not an admirable character and a set of impeccable values. This is a stark contrast to what he goes on to do: designing planes that he knew would cost millions of lives.
How do we reconcile the difference? Surely Miyazaki did not construct Horikoshi’s character so painstakingly only for him to turn into someone completely different in the latter half of the film. In fact, I would argue that the scenes I discussed were pivotal in establishing horikoshi’s character as a man capable of integrity, generosity, and great kindness. Horikoshi is not indifferent to suffering, and he is neither callous nor unkind. Rather, his desire to ‘create something beautiful’ fundamentally eclipses everything else about him, and this creates a seemingly bizarre inconsistency in characterisation. His marriage with Naoko, for instance, ultimately took a backseat to his work, yet one cannot doubt that his love for her was real; Naoko’s tragic circumstances lay not in marrying an unloving husband, but in marrying a loving one whose passion for his work ultimately eclipsed his love for her.
This brings us to yet another dilemma: to create or not to create? What is the ultimate aim of creating something beautiful? Is creating something beautiful an end in itself? And if it is, is it important enough for us to ignore its great potential for harm? If the capacity to create comes with an equal, or even greater capacity to destroy, does one still continue with his pursuit? Horikoshi’s personal choice was to create; he values a world with pyramids and suffering above a world without one. Ultimately, there is no clear answer to this question; the film’s open ended resolution acknowledges the intelligence of the viewer- that he is capable of seeking his own answers.
Miyazaki is undoubtedly one of the most talented, if not the most talented director of animated films in our era; it would not be stretching the boundaries of our imagination to call him a genius. He could have directed a film on a door knob maker’s quest for perfection and it would probably still have been an objective success. If his main goal was to explore the theme of flight, he could have chosen to base the film on so many other quests that did not culminate in a violent and bloody end. Yet he chose to dabble with something that he knew involved murky moral ambiguity and great controversy.
This is where I choose to depart from the objectivity I have been trying to adopt thus far: I find it unlikely that miyazaki, who spent a great part of his life devoted to creating ‘beautiful’ things, would choose not to empathise with Horikoshi’s cause, however much it conflicted with his aspirations towards peace. While Miyazaki may not entirely excuse Horikoshi’s terrible deeds, he extends an arm of sympathy to the engineer, and does so in his typical manner: subtly, ingeniously, and without compromising his own belief of non-violence. In many aspects Miyazaki followed the footsteps of Horikoshi: entering the film industry fuelled by pure passion and a touch of genius, with little knowledge of what may ultimately belie his dream. (Surely Horikoshi did not, as a child, dream of creating planes with the sole purpose of killing millions, and surely Miyazaki could not have foreseen the extent of his influence that will definitely last far beyond his career.) There are always tremendous costs involved in single-minded pursuits of, well, anything. throughout the movie I could feel Miyazaki questioning himself, if not the audience: what is the point of creating something so beautiful, if it will only end up tainted by the greed and filth of men? Miyazaki spent six long decades toiling to create beautiful art, and in his final film, he turns to himself and asks the most fundamental question of all: why?
The Wind Rises might not have been Miyazaki’s most commercially successful film, but was one that reached out to the audience with sincerity and genuineness, because the film sees Miyazaki weaving in his personal tale. There are few animated films that can convey so complex and haunting a story with such beauty and grace, without losing the essence and realism of its plot as well as the message it aimed to convey, and such is the magic of Miyazaki.
