Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

The Wind Rises

The New York Film Festival will close, this year , with THE WIND RISES (Kaze Tachinu) The very latest film by Hayao Miyazaki. Th film is an historical narrative. It s also a visionary cinematic poem about the fragility of humanity.(2013) This will be the master, Miyazaki’s first premiere at the festival.

The New York Film Festival, this year, will include, for the first time, a Hayayo Miyazaki film from Japan. THE WIND RISES (Kaze Tachinu) is the great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s new film based on the life of Jiro Hirokoshi, the man who designed the Zero fighter. An elliptical historical narrative, THE WIND RISES is also a visionary cinematic poem about the fragility of humanity.

The following piece was lifted from The LA Times about the controversy this film is stirring in its homelands:

The movie’s subject dovetails with an issue currently under heated debate in Japan: the new prime minister’s plan to amend the country’s constitution to allow for the building of a full-fledged military, boosting the limited self-defense forces put in place after the war.

Miyazaki, a venerated cultural figure in Japan, published an essay last month objecting to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan, in the process raising the ire of some Japanese conservatives, who on Internet message boards labeled him “anti-Japanese” and a “traitor.”

Miyazaki’s movie, which is seeking U.S. distribution, reflects his pacifist stance. In the subtitled trailer above, he depicts Japan in the years leading up to WWII, when it faced some of the same problems that have plagued the country in recent years, including a devastating earthquake and economic stagnation. The character of Horikoshi appears as a contemplative young man, tossing paper airplanes with a girl, gazing at the Japanese countryside from the window of a steam train and working in a factory, until the war hits and the tone shifts, with a plane breaking up in the sky and blood falling to the ground.

Miyazaki has some shared history with Horikoshi. During the war, his father’s company made rudders for the designer’s Zero planes. He also has another connection to the war: when Miyazaki was a child, his father ran a club that served occupying American soldiers.

In 2011, Miyazaki told Japan’s Cut magazine that he was inspired to make “The Wind Rises” by a quote he read of Horikoshi’s: “All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.”

The controversy over the film hasn’t hurt its box office prospects in Japan. “The Wind Rises” has been the No. 1 film since it opened four weeks ago, and has so far grossed $57 million there.

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