The Wind Rises review

THE WIND RISES:

SOARS WITH BEAUTIFUL ANIMATION, MASTERFUL DIRECTING, AND A WELCOMING FAREWELL TO A GREAT FILMMAKER!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: **** out of 4

TOUCHSTONE PICTURES

Jiro and Nahoko in Hayao Miyazaki’s farewell masterpiece, The Wind Rises

            Director Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo) has gone a long way to make it to this point in his filmmaking career, his final animated film, The Wind Rises. Like all of his other films, The Wind Rises has Miyazaki’s traditional hand drawn and painted beautiful animation, very strong character development, and once again wonderful direction by Miyazaki himself.

            The film focuses on a young man named Jiro (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt-Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper) who ever since he was a little boy, wanted to fly Japanese airplanes in World War II. Unfortunately he has poor eyesight and wears glasses, so he decided that instead of flying planes, he would build them for the Japanese soldiers to use for battle during the war.

            Jiro joins a plane engineering company with his friend Honjo (voiced by John Krasinski-The Office, Leatherheads), and he becomes one of the world’s most innovative plane designers. Along the way he meets a young girl named Naoko (voiced by Emily Blunt-The Young Victoria, The Adjustment Bureau, Looper) who he falls in love with and the illusion of an Italian airplane designer named Giovanni Caproni (voiced by Stanley Tucci-Captain America: The First Avenger, Margin Call, The Hunger Games franchise) who was Jiro’s inspiration to build planes ever since he was a kid.

            Overall The Wind Rises is a wonderful movie and a great one for Miyazaki to go out on. I always praised his animation and art style ever since I first watched Kiki’s Delivery Service when I was a little kid, the first Miyazaki film I ever saw.

            I also loved the English voice dubbing on The Wind Rises, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, and the rest of the cast portray their characters wonderfully with a lot of effort thrown in to bring these characters to life, honestly I think they did it flawlessly.

            The score music by Joe Hisaishi for the movie is composed beautifully and such a joy to listen to, like most of his music in Miyazaki’s work and the film ends with a lovely song by Yumi Matsutoya.

            This is up there with Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke as one of my favorite movies by Hayao Miyazaki. With its wonderful animation, strong characters, great English dubbing and voice acting, and a touching and emotional story really bring this outstanding film together and Miyazaki has officially ended his filmmaking career with an animated movie that’s beautiful…like the wind.