風立ちぬ The Wind Rises (2013)

I had watched nearly all of Miyazaki's movies, with the exception of the latest, Howl's Moving Castle and a hand full his older films, mostly those predating Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

A co-worker had told me of this film, which was what inspired me to watch it, and her explanation about the "theme" song of the film Hikokigumo by Yuming.  Honestly, I only know Yuming from her song "Koibito ga Santa Kurozu", which a friend of mine sent to me on a mix tape, many years ago.  I do have a bit of a bone to pick with this being called a "theme" song.   The song is merely tacked on to the end credits, a place where any song will do.   This is the same problem with Batman Forever's inclusion of A Kiss from a Rose and even Time Bandits' Dream Away (a song that REALLY didn't fit the theme of the movie) 

Since Hikoigumo was written 4 decades before the film was created,  I realize that it wouldn't match the action in the film,  it's expected that the theme song would be at the beginning of the film or at lease during the film, where it captures the feel of some of the action taking place on the screen.

Anyhow, this was a pretty good film, but it lacked the feel of a Miyazaki film.  There weren't any strange creatures and a minimum of odd machines.  Those odd machines that did appear were only in dream sequences, but even then they bothered me a bit, as they often showed odd working of engines that seemed to demonstrate a lack of knowledge of how engines operate on the part of the director.

The story of the main character is certainly a worthy one, based on the real life and real accomplishments of Jiro Horikoshi.  Learning of this man was a great history lesson.

One big problem I had with the film was that tacked on love story. First, the love the characters supposedly felt never seemed authentic.  They instantaneously met and married, with out any indication of their love.  Then as their story continued, they but still have no actions that revealed they felt any love for each other.  And finally, not only was the story but it is not an actual event that took place in Jiro's life.  His actual wife never suffered tubculosis nor stayed in a santarium.  This was just a story that Miyazaki had read and decided to tack on to this film in an attempt to give the film a love story and perhaps depth (a cheap attempt to get an academy award?), but it felt like a failed attempt to pull at our heart strings.

One other odd thing was that the machine sounds all appeared to be made by people's mouths.  Perhaps this was an attempt at a unique style, but it sounded like elementary school kids making engine noises.