The Wind Rises

In 1991, discussing Japan’s endorsement of (and his opposition to) the Gulf War, Hayao Miyazaki wrote, “I think I might find an entry point for [a] film in my hazy thoughts about how our country has not yet made a full accounting of the Second World War.” The Wind Rises may be that film, an emotional accounting of the war and its buildup through the intimate, fictionalized biography of Jiro Horikoshi, the brilliant, exacting aeronautical engineer who designed the deadly Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter planes. Tracing young Jiro’s early infatuation with flight, the film transforms into a “devastatingly honest lament for the corruption of beauty” (David Ehrlich, IndieWire).