The Wind Rises: A contextual review of a Miyazaki masterpieceMain MenuThe Wind RisesMiyazaki's Memorial MasterpieceThe Engineer and his DreamThe Spectre of WarHow the war machine drives the flying machineThe PlaneThe fighter that revolutionized Japan's presence in WWIIAn Entreaty for PeacePacifist underpinnings of a stunning celebration of the best in humanityMatthew Johnson43d9cd631c24de88870a848d2c5a6964ae4ed66aMatthew Johnson
1media/maxresdefault.jpg2017-10-31T09:56:36-07:00The Engineer and his Dream3image_header2017-10-31T09:57:41-07:00The film follows the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the brilliant aeronautical engineer whose intellectual luminescence bridged the technological gap created by Japan’s poverty during the years leading up to the second world war, as he designs the Mitsubishi A6M “Zero” fighter. Jiro, as a child in the first scenes of the movie, establishes an incredible passion and propensity for airplane design. Utilizing the trademark magical realism that pervades many of Miyazaki’s films, Jiro dreams about an established aeronautical engineer whom he read about in an American magazine, an Italian named Caproni. Jiro discovers that he is not only dreaming about Caproni, he is instead dreaming with Caproni–with whom he has a conversation regarding the purpose of building planes that hints at the spectre of war that tarnishes such magnificent inventions. The movie alternates between Jiro’s reality as he grows and his dreamscape, wherein he literally realizes his dreams of designing beautiful airplanes.
