The Wind Rises

Set in Japan during the Taish? period, young Jiro is inspired by the famous aircraft designer Giovanni Caproni and dreams of someday building a magnificent plane that will fly like the wind that he loves so much. Years later, in the midst of WWII, he designs the Zero fighter aircraft which becomes the best war plane in the world at the time.

Hayao Miyazaki united two men who lived during the thirties in order to create Jiro, the main character of the film which is both a fictional biography about the aircraft engineer Jiro Horikoshi and loosely based on the original short story The Wind Has Risen by Tatsuo Hori. Described by Miyazaki as a mix "of intense enthusiasm, overflowing excitement and extreme concentration", Jiro is a realist and an idealist, a go-getter and a dreamer, all at once. Fantasy is a central theme in the film which interlaces three types of imagery: cyclically portraying scenes of everyday life, technical explanations, but mostly emphasising the passionate dream sequences.

The Wind Rises does not preach anti-war, nor does it attempt to apologise for it. It's the story about a boy-turned-man and his passion, this dream that is both monumental and extremely dangerous and the strive for perfection that comes with its share of destruction.