I'm Sure There's a French Phrase for The Wind Rises

The Wind Rises feels like a man's final movie. It's no secret that Hayao Miyazaki is a fan of aeronautics. You can see it in everything from Porco Rosso to Laputa to Kiki's Delivery Service. It is no wonder that The Wind Rises is the work he would choose to round out his storied career. It is a movie with a singular vision, one driven by a man with enough influence, talent, and respect to make exactly the kind of movie that he wanted to make. It feels like a movie a man would make knowing he would never have another chance.

It is also a movie so long and so dull that it can only be explained by passion of a single man at its helm. No group of people would willingly make a movie this listless without a genius at the helm. Even an accident would have made something more lively than what I saw.Knowing that makes this all the more the bummer.

Either in order to make sense of The Wind Rises or to keep my brain from shutting down, I started thinking about Dr. Zhivago. They're both historical films, they both share a grand scale, and they're both bound by doomed romances. Most importantly they are driven to complete a singular life's work. David Lean's film is also a movie where a great many things don't happen for a long period of time. If I remember correctly the climax of the film is Omar Sharif writing a poem in a cold house. It's not exactly helicopter explosion city.

Yet, Dr. Zhivago has something that The Wind Rises does not. David Lean's turn at a mystical artist has emotional stakes. It has conflict that is both personal and historical. It's a movie that is weighed down with a sense of doom from the very first scene (even if we don't know a thing about the Russian Revolution). Even if we do not care about the plight of a mystical poet and his failed romances, we do care about his family and the women he loved because there are horrible consequences lurking in the back of every twist of the plot.

The Wind Rises has none of this. It's a drama with no real stakes, which is to say that it is a drama with no drama.

Our hero sleepwalks from scene to scene until he overcomes each and every obstacle merely by sticking around long enough. By the end I am not left with a sense of Jiro's life or accomplishments. He moves from one scene to another with little connection between the two. Plot threads are forgotten. Others are half-heartily followed through on. There is no resonance, instead I am overwhelmed by the thought that like Jiro, I should have fallen asleep.

It's strange because the techniques at play in this film are not any different than Hayao Miyazaki's other films. With the exception of maybe Nausicaa or Princess Mononoke, most of his films do not have a sense of being driven forward. His movies tend to unfold calmy and quietly. Spirited Away in many ways does have a driving conceit at the center (the fear of losing ones parents and one's memory), but it also has one of his most incidental plots. It also might be his very best.

The idea of a film without a story, a film that is told in a seemingly lilting, meandering format is on perfect display in his first great film, My Neighbor Totoro. Roger Ebert's describes the movie as"is based on experience, situation and exploration—not on conflict and threat."

My Neighbor Totoro works because we are invested in the world. We're invested in the characters. We want to see where they're going, even if that means watching them do something as simple as plant a garden. Or wait in the rain. We are care about the movie because it's fun to look at, but we also care about the characters. It's a fully realized film that is bursting at the seams with life in its 86 minute run.

The Wind Rises rare bit of life occur in Jiro's lengthy dream sequences. It's telling that the most affecting moments of the film are those that are completely untethered from reality.

These dreams are moments of pure beauty. They remind you of the great talent that Hayao Miyazaki possesses. They show that his vision and passion can work together to deliver a kind of visual showcase that nobody else in film can. It was enough for me to think to myself "I think I love this movie" during the first twenty minutes of the film.

It was not to last. It does not last because the rest of the film gets in the way. Jiro's non-trials with plane building. His rather uneventful world tour. His romance that, after courting, has all of the passion of a bowl of fruit. We have moments of wonder sandwiched in between these long periods of tedium. And then we finally return to Jiro's dreams. Finally.

This isn't a spoiler, but the final scene, like the first scene, takes place in a dream. It is a scene where Jiro reconciles his dream with his reality. It is where the two concepts meet and he, we must assume, comes to another epiphany. This time, though, instead of thinking of how much I love Miyazaki and how much I want to go on a journey with him about planes and about the kind of men who want to fly, I am annoyed at how long it took us to get here. It is not a scene that is connected to anything that matters. It wasn't until later, that I thought about this movie and why I have taken against it that I realized that the dreams have to matter as much as the dreamers.

Slapping around what might be the last work of a great director doesn't lift my spirits. Forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but the older I get, the less fun slagging off things has become. I want things to be good. I want good directors to make good movies. Rambling on about how the emperor has no clothes is not the fun hobby that it once was. It's all of the fun of jousting windmills but without any of the idiotic nobility.
 
Looking back on the legacy of Hayao Miyazaki, I think he has the right to make a bad movie. If anyone is allowed to say whatever they want, good or bad, it is Hayao Miyazaki. He's earned it.

The Wind Rises seems like a movie shaped by passion-- Passion for the material, passion for the time, and a passion to say something that maybe his lighter films could not say. It is a shame that this passion doesn't translate into a better film.

The Wind Rises stands as a testament to the magnitude of Miyazaki's legacy, yet ultimately exists apart from it. Its rare moments of wonder only remind us just how wonderful of a career that he has had, of what a wonderful man he must be.



WATCH YOUR SIX, IT'S THE AD GAUNTLET

It is at this point that I open myself up to severe criticism. You can do so by visiting Old College Comics and buying one of the anthologies I worked on. For better or for worse, Hayao Miyazaki's fantasy works were huge inspirations for me and my silly viking comic.

I also do a podcast called White Guys, Square Glasses (for some reason) with my friend Cruz Flores. We recently shifted the format to be about one movie a week. This last week we discussed Goon. Next week will be. . . The Toxic Avenger. Ugh. I'm dreading that one. The Wind Rises will not be one of them, but I'd like to think that there will be a future podcast about one of his other films. You know, One of his good films.

Here's my twitter, too.

Grave of the Fireflies: A Review

Released in 1988, Grave of the Fireflies is the. . . I. . . Released in 1988, Grave of the. . . Grave of. . . nope. Nope. Can't do it. I can't. . . I just can't do it.

Fuck.

I just want to go home, guys.

Top Ten of All Time

Yesterday I was flipping through the channels and The Royal Tenenbaums happened to be on KTLA 5. At first I was surprised the movie was on TV during the day on the Sunday, because it's a goddamn good movie. I stuck with it for a few commercial breaks, I had other places to be, but in that time I remembered just how great that movie was. Everything about it works just so and it doesn't come off as annoying or played out in the way that a lot of other films try and fail to do (I won't name them, though I will say that I'd included some of Anderson's own movies on that list).

This whole thought process lead, naturally, to taxonomy. I was going to talk about The Royal Tenenbaums-- and maybe I should, I'll save that for a later date, I guess-- but instead I'm going to take the easy way out and make a list. It's my blog and I don't make any money for this, so, screw it, let me play in the sandbox how I want to.

So, what follows is my current top ten of all time list (in no particular order).


Terminator 2. 1991. Directed by James Cameron.


Yojimbo. 1961. Directed by Akria Kurosawa.


The Royal Tenenbaums. 2001. Directed by Wes Anderson.


There Will be Blood. 2007. Directed by P.T. Anderson (the good Paul Anderson).


The Big Lebowski. 1998. Directed by the Coen Brothers.


The Life and Death Colonel Blimp. 1943. Directed by Powell and Pressburger. (Also, while you can watch the full movie on You Tube, the quality is atrocious. It really deserves better. You deserve better.)


The Battle of Algiers. 1966. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo.


Princess Mononoke. 1997. Directed by Hayao Miyazki.


Blade Runner. 1981. Directed by Ridley Scott.


Alien. 1979. Directed by Ridley Scott (hey, he made the list twice, good for him!).

Same time next year? Sure. Why not.

Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live

As human beings we're naturally inclined to start seeing patterns in chaos. We're natural, born classifiers. We do it with just about everything. You can see it in how we order animals, how we list celestial bodies, and even the basic atomic structures. Hell, I doubt there's a single one of you reading this that doesn't have their CD collection organized in some way (mine is sorted autobiographically).

As a film major, I've been indoctrinated into doing this same exact thing, but in a much more annoying and much less useful manner. There's a whole theory about this kind of a thing-- the Auteur Theory is one of them, but I really don't want to get into that. Even though the Auteur Theory has been more or less debunked, I doubt there's a film dork around who doesn't start making connections between actors, directors, composers, film stock, or whatever as soon as he hears about a movie. It's what we do. It's a fault, I admit, but to err is to be human.

I just finished watching Kiki's Delivery Service about an hour ago and it got me thinking about something very specifically filmy. I watched another movie directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo (on the Cliff by the Sea) about a month or so ago and I guess that combined with this got me thinking about Miyazaki's female protagonists (I also have the Ponyo theme song stuck in my head again, but that's a whole other blog entry). I didn't plan on making a whole thesis on this idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I'm on to something.

(Kiki's Delivery Service is a perfectly fine film, with more than a few delightful moments. It isn't my favorite Hayao Miyazaki movie, but that's a bit like A Serious Man not being your favorite Coen Brother's movie, right?)

I'm right, damnit, and you're going to listen to me.

In a move rare to film, most of Miyazaki's movies are crammed full of strong, female characters and, what's more, they're often the main characters. Sure, they fall in love more often that a pure feminist outlook would enjoy, but, unlike most films with females as the leads, in his movies, finding love isn't their main goal in life and they're saving the day more often than men save them. Those are important and that's why I'm pointing this whole thing out.

In Kiki's case, there's a big fat pregnant woman that takes care of Kiki. She's unusual for a couple of reasons (being fat and being pregnant not withstanding), in that she A) Seems to run the bakery she works at without it ever been explicitly stated (and there's a lot of explicit statements going on in the American script for Miyazaki movies, for some damn reason) and B) Not only does her husband lack a name, but he never actually says a single word in the film.

(Of course, Kiki is the hero of the film, as well as the title character, but I figure that's a bit obvious. Though, as I'm going over this entry, I realize that while Kiki's Delivery Service doesn't have a bad guy in it, the most unlikable people in the film are also girl her age.)

The examples go on. Just off the top of my head, there's Spirited Away where the main character is a bratty little girl trapped in a holiday spa for spirits (which is run by a woman-- a bad witch, in this case). There's Ponyo (on the Cliff By the Sea), where, even though the main hero is a young boy, his adventure is caused by the titular little girl (who has an idiot for a dad and a goddess for a mother), and the parent that's most present and caring in the film is his mother. Then there's Nausicaa, which is another titular female character, who is a princess and the real hero of the film. Princess Mononoke, like Ponyo, is split between two characters-- Prince Ashitaka and Sai-- and while Ashitaka is the real protagonist of the film, Sai incites most of the film's conflict, along with the morally grey antagonist, Lady Eboshi, who runs an iron works where all of the employees are women (in fact the biggest badasses in the film are Sai, Eboshi, and Sai's adopted mother, everyone else is either in the way or tagging along).

I could go on, but I think I might have run out of movies where the female being the most important-- or strongest-- character. That's enough, isn't it?

It's not all of his movies, but it's enough to take notice and to start to imagine a pattern. And, let me ruminate on what I said higher up, how many other director's-- male or female, Japanese or whatever- where that is true? How many directors make movies where a little girl is the hero and its directed towards a general audience?

I'd reckon not very many.

I guess if you wanted to be some sour-grapes feminist you could argue that Miyazaki's film are inherently sexist because they're scripted and directed by a man and there's nothing a man can do, even when he's trying not to be--ESPECIALLY when he's trying not to be-- to not be a mysogynist in some way, because that is simply the structure of the phallocentric cockocracy. And, I don't even need to get started on the fact that Studio Ghibli's films feel the need to stick their female characters into fantastic scenarios like being a monster princess or married to a sailor instead of putting them in real situations like coaching Portia de Rossi on how to give birth while submerged in a tub. Real issues.

Of course, that bitch can go pound sand.

Miyazaki's films aren't exactly bell hooks essays, but they're amazing pieces of animation and unlike a piece by hooks, his movies actually have a chance at being seen and appreciated. Children need to see these kinds of movies and to let them know, even in the most gentle, hackneyed way sometimes, that, yes, as a girl you can go and do some amazing things. Now, could you please suck some blood out of your magic, wolf-mother's neck, she's been shot by a samurai and the shot is working its way to her heart.



SIDE NOTE: For the record, my Studio Ghibli films are in this order-- Princess Mononoke > Porco Rosso > Spirited Away > Ponyo> Kiki's Delivery Service > Nausicaa.

SUB-SIDE NOTE: Oh man, if I ever got to teach a class, I'm totally doing a lesson on feminist theory and Hayao Miyazaki.

SUB-SUBE SIDE NOTE: I posted the Japanese trailer because, at the expense of looking like a fucking weeaboo, it is an order less annoying than the American trailer. Upon looking up other clips from the movie I noticed that Disney ruined, RUINED the songs in the film. Instead of this cool, little, 1960's rhythm and blues song, it's been replaced by this slick, poppy dreck that doesn't fit into the movie at all. And it isn't as though it's a bad song! It's a really fun one! Leave it alone! I can understand adding dialogue for the dumb babies, but don't make them suffer through shitty music. That's too far, mate.