The Wind Rises

Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli have delivered some of the most beautiful and moving animated images ever created. From My Neighbour Totoro to Laputa: Castle in the Sky to the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, Miyazaki’s continued interests in innocence, flight and the possibilities of imagination receive great expression in The Wind Rises, a fictionalised account of the life of Jirô Horikoshi, the aeronautical engineer who helped revolutionise Japan’s air industry. The film treads a very fine line between whimsical dreams and the weight of history, which could be a cause for criticism as the influence of Jirô’s designs on military aircraft in World War II is almost completely avoided. But The Wind Rises is not about history so much as the integration of dreams with reality, and in this regard it succeeds as an enchanting and plausible tale of realising one’s ambition.