There's such an artistry to Miyazaki's work - most noticeably on the visual level, but he has the ability to engage on the level of story, too. I've seen a few, though by no means all, of his films before and liked them - Spirited Away, Porco Rosso, Ponyo and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (as a double feature), and Princess Mononoke, those last two being particular favourites. The Wind Rises is interesting - it has the same gentle poignancy of those others, but without the fantastic elements and overall a fairly muted feel.
There are some problematic aspects - the unquestioned way that the (dying) girl's needs are subordinated to Jiro's work, the romanticisation of the life's work of an aeronautical engineer whose efforts culminate in the building of the fighter planes ultimately used by Japan in WWII - although it may be possible to make sense of them in terms of Miyazaki's concern with the way that beauty and the natural can be tainted or corrupted by other forces ... overall, the film does work better as a mood piece than a particularly thematically consistent one.
(w/ Jade)
There are some problematic aspects - the unquestioned way that the (dying) girl's needs are subordinated to Jiro's work, the romanticisation of the life's work of an aeronautical engineer whose efforts culminate in the building of the fighter planes ultimately used by Japan in WWII - although it may be possible to make sense of them in terms of Miyazaki's concern with the way that beauty and the natural can be tainted or corrupted by other forces ... overall, the film does work better as a mood piece than a particularly thematically consistent one.
(w/ Jade)
