Must go against the wind

Clarabelle 2021-12-19 08:01:06

This is Hayao Miyazaki's best movie. Many, many years later, when people look at Hayao Miyazaki again, they should not see Magical Girl and My Neighbor Totoro, but this "The Wind Rises". At that time, all the voices chanting war, dreams, and love had already quieted down. People would watch and figure out this movie repeatedly, and see hope in it.

This is just like most of the good things, which are ahead of the times, unacceptable, or misunderstood, but time will always wash away the hustle and bustle, and the true value will be cherished.

In fact, at the beginning of the film, quoting writer Horikomio and indirectly quoting Paul Valery's verse in "The Graveyard by the Sea": "The wind is up, we must work hard to live!" It is already clear that this story has nothing to do with dreams and love. Let alone war, these are just the environment and conditions that constitute "to live", but none of them can constitute the whole thing of "to be alive", and Miyazaki never wants to reduce the complexity of "to be alive" to these. Any one of the elements. Life is complicated all around! Life must be complicated.

In a sense, Hayao Miyazaki's "The Wind Rises" and Yu Hua's "Being Alive" want to tell the same thing, although the stories after they are told are so different, because the author's own life experience and the world's Perception is different. However, what they are asking is how people should work hard to survive in a specific generation. Yu Hua's "living" is constant but lost. Family wealth, status, reputation, relatives, and even human dignity are taken away a little bit, leaving a piece of white land that is really clean, and ultimately empty and meaningless. Therefore, in the great historical change, people can do nothing and retreat. Retreat again, there will be no retreat, and finally use "fate" to understand all unwillingness and unwillingness.

And what Hayao Miyazaki saw in "The Wind Is Up" is the power and light that "must live" burst out, just like Jiro Horikoshi said when he witnessed the failure of the plane test flight: "My An endless road has opened up in front of me. "Such a spirit of going upstream is also peculiar to the group of intellectuals in the early stage of China's modernization movement. Such a person cannot write about "alive" like Yu Hua. This kind of courage means that no matter how difficult the conditions are, there is always hope.

From Meiji to Showa, Japan has not been smooth sailing on the road of modernization. This is often discussed in the dialogue between Jiro Horikoshi and his colleagues, how backward Japan is in their eyes, although there are more and more Western coffees. After the great earthquake, traditional narrow streets were built. Although they worked hard to make airplanes, they still used bullock carts to transport airplanes. Although they could go to Germany to study, they were blocked from other Westerners. It was said that the Japanese were plagiarizing technology. Although I can stand in front of the German fighters, I feel that it is impossible to surpass it anyway... This is the status quo, and it is also the first difficulty encountered by Jiro Horikoshi, and it is also a difficulty that is relatively easy to overcome. Because relying on internal hard work and a good scientific research environment outside, it is only a matter of time to improve technology. The harder problem is actually on the ethical level.

How to live in the generation you live in? In the final analysis, it is an ethical problem. Jiro Horikoshi’s dream was to design the most beautiful airplane, but in his time, to study airplanes, they could only be fighter planes, that is, the props for murder. Almost every time, in Horikoshi Jiro’s dream, the big white bird flying freely in the blue sky always finally slid towards the evening sky, overlooking the small houses and crowds in the shadows, and the flames of war spread in front of my eyes... When the dream was distorted , How do we decide? Hayao Miyazaki, who painted such a protagonist, faced the same question. Why should the person who made the tools of murder be the host? People keep asking like this around. Hayao Miyazaki himself also needs to face his own questions. So in the movie, Hayao Miyazaki drew the most beautiful airplane in the world through the protagonist’s dream, with a pure white body, seagull-like wings, no shells, no gun barrels, and she flies against the wind like a bird. , There is no more war on the ground, no soldiers who are gone forever, and no scorched corpses.

In this most beautiful airplane scene, Hayao Miyazaki gave his answer. In the documentary recording Miyazaki’s creative process, he also tried to use answers such as "because I like it", "because I want to do it", "or can I only ask the gods", but he really couldn't Convince yourself... Then, he drew the imaginary white airplane scene. I think he already has the answer, but the answer is not so much that of Horikoshi Jiro, it is more of Horikoshio, the author of "Wind Up". Human life is so short. In this short life, we may still be born in troubled times, or born poor, or weak and sick since childhood. These are things that we can’t change, we can’t change our own existence. Environment, but we can still live as meaningful as possible in the most barren and limited situation, and this meaning is not given to us by later generations, any of our decisions can only be based on our limited to the world And the incomplete understanding is made, and the meaning of these decisions is produced at the moment of making the decision.

In Horito's "Wind Up", the two protagonists who fall in love only have a short time together, but when they live together in the Fujimi Sanatorium, they can feel the sweetness of life more than others. To the wonders of mountains, woods, rain, and breeze. For them, love and death are so close, and what they can do while alive is so limited and trivial, but it is these trivial things that give them the meaning of the moment. For the living, meaning does not arise in the past, nor in the future, it can only arise in the present.

From this point of view, the meaning of making airplanes comes from the moment of making airplanes, and the meaning of drawing comics comes from the moments of drawing comics. Horikoshi Jiro wanted to make the most beautiful plane. It happened to coincide with that era of war. The plane would fly into the sky and crash. A fighter plane can defend or destroy a country. What kind of decision does he have to make? I think when he did his best to make the best airplane with limited resources, he probably didn't think much about why I wanted to make an airplane. And Hayao Miyazaki himself, on the first day of planning this movie, knew the questions he had to face, but this could not hinder his determination to complete the movie.

Every one of us has this experience. Recklessly make a decision. Many people can’t understand it, and it’s hard for you to explain it. It’s like taking off against the wind. You don’t know why before flying into the sky. Such determination. But in fact, you are not reckless, but you know very well that there is nothing more meaningful than this decision at the moment. In fact, a person’s life is a little bit pushed forward by countless decisions that cannot see the consequences. Of course, there will be failures, falls, grief and regrets, and it may also bring harm or pain to others, but we also know that if we come again Once, we will not make a second choice. The history of mankind is also pushed forward by such people and things, which will not always bring luck and happiness to mankind, but in this long history, those persistence, patience, those flashes of inspiration, and countless restless sleeplessness The painstaking night, those joys and tears of success, are like dots of stars in the black sky, illuminating our past, present, and future.

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In Paul Valery’s long poem "The Cemetery by the Sea", he is caught in the eternal peace of the cemetery Deeply shocked, through the tombstones, the poet crosses death to see immortality and immortality, which is a better existence than life, but the wind blows and the calm is broken, bringing the poet back to the living world, although I know At this moment, everything will stop at death, but you still have to work hard and live with all your heart. Le vent se lève!... Il faut tenter de vivre!

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Extended Reading
  • Bernardo 2021-12-19 08:01:06

    "She has shown the most beautiful side to her beloved" Hayao Miyazaki's last feature film, a biographical story adapted from the historical facts of the aviator, is a lot more serious, and the rich history is expressed in poetic and beautiful sound and pictures. , There are still dreams, long absences and initial touches. "The wind is blowing, you can only try to survive" "Aircraft is a cursed dream."

  • Isobel 2022-04-24 07:01:11

    Some people are crazy?

The Wind Rises quotes

  • Caproni: Tell me Japanese Boy. Is the wind still rising?

  • Giovanni Battista Caproni: Every engineer has his 10 years in the sun.