The Wind Rises
Jun. 28th, 2014 08:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingA major theme, if not the major theme, of The Wind Rises is that it's important to take the time to think deeply about one's mistakes. In fact, the majority of the film's action, as well as its most spectacular moments, involve its protagonist reflecting on something that went wrong and imagining how it could have been done differently for the purpose of rising to greater heights in the future.
Because The Wind Rises portrays Jiro Horikoshi, the creator of the Zero fighter plane, in a humanistic light, showing that he wasn't a bad person despite the planes he specifically developed as dogfighters being responsible for hundreds of American (and Chinese) deaths and later being adapted for kamikaze flights, there has been backlash against the film as being tactlessly nationalistic.
This both is and isn't true. The Wind Rises has a strong and crystal clear anti-war message and stages repeated criticism of the Japanese wartime government. The thought police who come after Jiro for no apparent reason are quite frightening, for example, and the military administration is portrayed as comically inept. In addition, while flight is obviously a thing of beauty, scenes of battle are accompanied by the same low vocal singing-chanting-droning noise that the viewer first comes to associate with the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which is nothing short of horrifying.
That being said, there is a measure of pride shown in the ability of certain Japanese citizens of the time to innovate even without adequate resources, to stand up to administrators from Western countries (specifically Germany) that will not treat them as equals, and to be almost superhumanly brave in the face of natural, political, and personal disasters. Despite the terrible uses to which the technology they developed was put, what Jiro Horikoshi and his colleague Kiro Honjo managed to achieve is breathtaking and profound. The director doesn't position these achievements as necessarily Japanese, but rather as achievements for the human race, as Jiro especially is influenced by the science, art, poetry, and songs of Western countries such as France and Italy, which were in close dialog with Japan during the opening decades of the twentieth century.
Like the 2011 Studio Ghibli film From Up On Poppy Hill, which shows students working together to restore an old building by cleaning out and washing away all of the old junk that has piled up inside it, The Wind Rises asks its audience to meditate on Japan's past in the same way that its protagonist carefully considers his own mistakes with the intention of not making them again as he moves into the future. The message seems to be that, if we can understand and take responsibility for what we did wrong, then it is perfectly natural for us to celebrate what we did right, as history is shaped not by the ponderous and incomprehensible movements of world powers but rather by the courage and small triumphs of individuals.
Because The Wind Rises portrays Jiro Horikoshi, the creator of the Zero fighter plane, in a humanistic light, showing that he wasn't a bad person despite the planes he specifically developed as dogfighters being responsible for hundreds of American (and Chinese) deaths and later being adapted for kamikaze flights, there has been backlash against the film as being tactlessly nationalistic.
This both is and isn't true. The Wind Rises has a strong and crystal clear anti-war message and stages repeated criticism of the Japanese wartime government. The thought police who come after Jiro for no apparent reason are quite frightening, for example, and the military administration is portrayed as comically inept. In addition, while flight is obviously a thing of beauty, scenes of battle are accompanied by the same low vocal singing-chanting-droning noise that the viewer first comes to associate with the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which is nothing short of horrifying.
That being said, there is a measure of pride shown in the ability of certain Japanese citizens of the time to innovate even without adequate resources, to stand up to administrators from Western countries (specifically Germany) that will not treat them as equals, and to be almost superhumanly brave in the face of natural, political, and personal disasters. Despite the terrible uses to which the technology they developed was put, what Jiro Horikoshi and his colleague Kiro Honjo managed to achieve is breathtaking and profound. The director doesn't position these achievements as necessarily Japanese, but rather as achievements for the human race, as Jiro especially is influenced by the science, art, poetry, and songs of Western countries such as France and Italy, which were in close dialog with Japan during the opening decades of the twentieth century.
Like the 2011 Studio Ghibli film From Up On Poppy Hill, which shows students working together to restore an old building by cleaning out and washing away all of the old junk that has piled up inside it, The Wind Rises asks its audience to meditate on Japan's past in the same way that its protagonist carefully considers his own mistakes with the intention of not making them again as he moves into the future. The message seems to be that, if we can understand and take responsibility for what we did wrong, then it is perfectly natural for us to celebrate what we did right, as history is shaped not by the ponderous and incomprehensible movements of world powers but rather by the courage and small triumphs of individuals.
