It is perhaps fitting that the final feature by Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki looks back in time. Departing from the fantasy films that make up the bulk of his work, he tells the story of Jiro Horikoshi, whose real-life counterpart designed Japanese aircraft used in World War II. Jiro literally dreams of flying long before the war. The charming sequences in which he converses with the dream-conjured Italian aeronautics pioneer Giovanni Caproni have a touch of the whimsy that characterizes Miyazaki’s other work.
A key element of the story captures the 1923 earthquake that nearly destroyed Tokyo, but most of the film takes place later, when Jiro has begun working for an aircraft-design firm. Looking at the more advanced work being done in Europe and America, he burns with an ambition born of what the film suggests was a national inferiority complex. Arguably, this complex translated into an ugly nationalism, but in Jiro it merely translates into a desire to build better airplanes. The contradiction between Jiro’s pure desire for engineering perfection and the military uses to which his designs will be put is a subtle theme of the film, and the understatement enhances rather than detracts from the bittersweet conclusion.
I don’t think this film is quite the masterpiece that Miyazaki was perhaps going for, given the historical sweep and dramatic themes. In the English-dubbed version, anyway, some the dialogue and its overly bright delivery gives the proceedings the feel of a old-fashioned “family” film. The love story is unusual in its particulars, but conventional in its telling, close to Nicholas Sparks territory. However, if this is the director’s last feature, as he has said it will be, it is not unworthy, and a good choice for those who will enjoy the lovely hand-drawn images but are wary of the spirits and demons that populate many of Miyazaki’s earlier films.
IMDb link
viewed 3/16/14 3:45 at Ritz Bourse and posted 3/16/14
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