The Wind Rises (***1/4)

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

Tokyo! (**1/2)

Three directors, three segments.

The first part, Michel Gondry’s “Interior Design,” is probably the best, and for most of its length the most conventional. The Tokyo Gondry (Be Kind Rewind, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) portrays is cramped and expensive, like many large cities. (The segment was adapted from a graphic novel called Cecil and Jordan in New York.) The main characters are a filmmaker and his girlfriend, who’ve just moved to the city and are temporarily sharing a friend’s tiny flat. Just as the plot and characters have been developed, though, it takes a turn for the fantastic, with the ending ultimately too abrupt and unsatisfying.

On the other hand, Leos Carax’s (Pola X) “Merde” was unsatisfying throughout. Featuring one of the most irritating central characters since Tom Green in Freddy Got Fingered, a crazy red-haired dude who comes up from the sewers and creates mayhem, it’s the only segment featuring non-Japanese characters. Possibly it is saying something about the country’s cultural homogeneity. Or not.

Finally, Japan native Joon-ho Bong (The Host, Memories of Murder) presents “Shaking Tokyo,” the shortest and simplest segment, about the paradoxical isolation big-city residents can experience. Its central character is a hikkomori, a hermit who survives on a parental stipend and delivered food. A chance event leads to his first human interaction in ten years.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/14/09