The dreams of the young Jirô lead him like a hurricane to the sky, in fantasized planes with both faces: that of passion and that of war. If aeronautical engineering is for him an art, the noblest one, how can he flourish when the only thing that has ever animated his passion is used to do evil?
It is while reading Kaze Tachinu (The wind rises), the news of Tatsuo Hori, that Hayao Miyazaki heard for the first time about Paul Valéry’s famous verse: "The wind is rising!… You have to try to live!" How strange, sometimes, the destiny of a writer! Who could have imagined, sixty-eight years after his death, that the author of the Marine Cemetery (from where this verse is extracted) would find himself repeatedly quoted, and in French, in a film of the Japanese master of animation?
This "Paulvalerian" inspiration is not, as it were, the only originality of Hayao Miyazaki’s film. Even if we find in The Wind some themes dear to the author of Spirited away – the necessary harmony between nature and civilization whose childhood would be the purest expression – this is the first time, 72 years old, that Miyazaki takes over a painful chapter in the history of his country. The film tells the story of a little boy, Jiro Horikoshi, who dreams of building planes. From an early age, his only idol was Gianni Caproni, the famous Italian aeronautics engineer. Like him, he does not fly; he will draw aircraft "as beautiful as the wind".
The young man embarks on his studies. One day, while he was travelling by train, the Great Kanto Earthquake occurred on September 1, 1923. It was on this occasion that he met Nahoko, whom he married a few years later. Jiro’s talent having been quickly spotted by the engineers of the Mitsubishi firm, he is hired, responsible for building the fighter plane that Japan will need to support Nazi Germany. It will be the famous Mitsubishi A6M1, better known as Zero Fighter.
We are far from My neighbor Totoro or Princesse Mononoke, two of Miyazaki’s masterpieces. And yet, once again, the magic happens. Landscapes of the Japanese countryside, scenes of everyday life, city ravaged by an earthquake, fire, torrential rain, snowstorm: its virtuosity is unparalleled. And, when Jiro starts dreaming of beautiful planes, or later, when he builds them, it is Miyazaki himself who falls back into childhood, all to his passion for flying objects.
The subject of the film is quite explicit. We understand that it would be better for planes to carry passengers over the oceans than to bomb enemy cities. Jiro admired Thomas Mann and Schubert, but seemed to have little sympathy for the Nazis he met. In reality, he experiences only two true passions: Nahoko and his planes. Everything else, the crisis, unemployment, misery, he observes, is softened even in front of hungry children, but to immediately return to his primary mission: to build the plane that will be the spearhead of the warlike expansion of Japan.
Will the wind rise, as in Japan, the age of the anti-smoking leagues because of the many passages where the characters are seen smoking? It would be absurd to deprive children of such a film: a bit of pacifism in these uncertain times certainly does no harm. Besides, it’s so beautiful!
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