Review: The Wind Rises (Released 9 May 2014)

Across 35 years and 11 films, Hayao Miyazaki has enriched the lives of millions around the world. From childhood classics like My Neighbour Totoro to darker, more adolescent tales like Princess Mononoke – he's never failed to produce great cinema. Few directors can claim such a filmography – with not one wrong turn whatsoever from 1979 to the present day. If you don't know his 11 pictures, you might assume that's because he found a successful formula and stuck to it; but that's really not the case. He's made comedy crime capers, fantasy epics, fairy tales and straight up sky pirate/minecart chase-y adventures. Now, we can add biopic to that list. The Wind Rises is promised to be Miyazaki's last film (though it's not the first time we've heard that!), and if it is, it's a fitting epilogue to his entire career.

In some ways, this is his most conservative picture, the true story of Jiro Horikoshi, a Japanese aircraft designer and engineer during World War II. But in tone, it's also his wildest deviation – at once softer and harder than anything we've seen from him before, a film that doesn’t turn away from either the most modest beauty or horrific devastation. Images and themes may be familiar – the fantasy of flight, the tragedy of war, the power of love – but it's presented here in such a different way to his other work. This is an old man's film – a film that flirts between memory, dreams and nightmares at all times. A film more about loss than discovery, but also a mature appreciation for what's been found.

Compared to Miyazaki's previous work, it is a bit slow and ponderous – there's certainly no magical transformations or huge battles to be found, and there's little driving the main character or the plot during the film's first two thirds. However, The Wind Rises does what inferior war films like Grave of the Fireflies fail to do – it maintains it's connection to its characters. The film is a tragedy, yes, and there are several shocking, heart-wrenching scenes scattered throughout – but that tragedy always has counterbalance with scenes of kindness, bravery and heroism. The film's best scene, which I won't spoil here if you don't already know about it, is one of the most effective depictions of an event of its kind – and despite the abstract imagery, always feels very real.

Some have been critical of the decision to produce a biopic of a man whose work caused the deaths of thousands – but I think the finished picture proves why that's something important, and even necessary. Rises is a film about the corruption of dreams AND the prevalence of hope in hopeless circumstances. Just as in Howl's Moving Castle and to an extent, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Miyazaki humanises the idea of war on every level – which here in an age of drones and drone strikes, I think is very important indeed, and a fitting note on which to say goodbye.

Rating: 4.5 Stars