SPOILER ALERT: In this post, I talk in great detail about The Wind Rises. If you haven't seen it yet, you might want to skip this post and come back later. :-)
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Miyazaki's latest and (allegedly) final movie doesn't have much of a plot. There is no grand climax, and not even much character development. It's just the story of a boy's life, as he follows his life's ambition to be an aeronautical engineer. It takes place in Japan, from just a few years before the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, through Japan's ensuing economic collapse, and into World War II. Although you witness all these disasters in the film, the main character, Jiro, seems oddly detached from them emotionally. And though the moral question of how the planes that he's creating are being used does come up repeatedly, he never really grapples with the issue in any noticeable way. Even surrounded by the wreckage of a war that he, in a material way, helped to create, he remains aloof, untouched--forever in his own little world.
It is easy to describe The Wind Rises in this way, and if you do, it sounds terrible. But with all this being said, I found this movie to be beautiful, touching, full of life, inspiration, and experiences both sensual and surreal. I loved it.
