Studio Ghibli gets serious in this romanticized take on avionic design at the dawn of the second world war. Engineering might seem a strange subject for animation, and at times it is, but in typical fashion the studio delights in writing their own rules and somehow coming out ahead.
In the same way that recent big-budget live action cinema has been trying to draw inspiration from animation's more fantastical elements, it seems that The Wind Rises borrows its mundane, grounding elements from reality. Detail has always been a calling card for Miyazaki's efforts, and here the old master has again outdone himself. The screen is flooded with life, with even the least remarkable background extra, almost-inanimate object, or stunning, towering cloudscape enjoying an unusual amount of motion and character - notes clearly taken from live action.
There's no shortage of the studio's usual breathtaking flights of fancy and wonder, either, but now they're tempered by that basis in reality. And, in a way, that makes them even more special. Dreams intertwine with lucidity so casually, it's tough to identify the moments of transition. The plot is less rigid than one might expect, too, strolling along at its own pace and lazily floating from one decade to the next. That makes it less gripping than the standard Ghibli effort, but we're invested in different ways.
Gorgeous, poetic, relaxing, inspiring, warm and funny and bittersweet; it's not at all what I expected, and no competition for Totoro or Mononoke or Spirited Away, but it's not trying to be.
Masterpiece movie, a quiet meditation on the meaning of life, passing of time, family drama, need for communication, life, death. A movie that flows so natural, it switches to each members of a middle-classed Taiwanese family, capturing the beauty of life, through the surprises they will encounter every day.
