Piano chords and lyrics for The Wind Rises; The Tragedy of the Artist by The Singing Hawk
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INTRO
You give up a few things, chasing a dream, but sometimes you still have to go for it because the wind is rising and we must try to live.
VERSE
Hayao Miyazaki's The
Wind Rises is probably one of my favorite films about artists and the creative process.
I've watched it twice now and the second time through I was really able to grasp just how tragic yet brilliant the story is and how much it has to say about the tragedy of being an artist in this world.
The film centers around
Jiro Horikoshi, a genius airplane engineer for
Japan during the lead-up to the
Second World War.
Anyone who knows
Miyazaki's obsession with planes shouldn't see this as a surprise.
Really, it's just strange that there are no pigs in this one.
Inspired from a very young age,
Jiro claims he wants to make airplanes because they are beautiful dreams.
He's not solely or even mostly an engineer, he's an artist who is sadly stuck in a profession that has no time for fanciful projects.
In my favorite scene of the movie,
Jiro tells his colleagues how his design was too heavy to fly, and mentions that one way to deal with this would be to take out the guns.
The room erupts into laughter, and rightly so, since they've been hired by the military to make fighter jets.
But Jiro doesn't laugh, instead he has this sad and resigned look on his face.
as he's accepted the fact that his artistic passion will forever be quenched by the realities of this world.
In the end,
Jiro does succeed in creating a beautiful new design, only for all of his planes to be destroyed in the war along with their pilots.
It serves as symbolism for how the world isn't built for the artists and dreamers, and may corrupt or destroy their work if they're allowed to make it in the first place.
In a lot of ways, this film is an autobiographical work about the director
Hayao Miyazaki himself, as he produced the fruits of his creativity and passion, his films only for some of them to be interpreted in ways he didn't mean.
For example, although
Miyazaki has made film after film filled to the brim with anti-war messages, many came to interpret
The Wind Rises as being pro-war since it glorifies
Jiro, who works for the military.
It's completely ridiculous.
I mean, Miyazaki even refused to attend the
Academy Awards for
Spirited Away as a peaceful protest of the
Iraq War.
Just like Jiro's planes being used for war, society wasn't always forgiving to
Miyazaki.
and often molded his passion projects into something terrible.
Miyazaki and Horikoshi both know that this could happen to their dreams, that both could fuel the fire for war, but both are still in love with creating, so they do it anyway.
As the movie states, they both choose a world with pyramids in it, a world with dreams.
But I digress.
Another parallel to
Miyazaki comes at the end of the film, when
Jiro is unable to spend time with the love of his life, due to his work, even though she was seriously sick with tuberculosis.
Eventually she leaves for a sanatorium, likely to never come back, all while
Jiro's away testing his plane.
And likewise, Miyazaki, even in his old age, has been known to work tirelessly on his projects, contributing to the rift between him and his son
Goro, who he never spent much time with.
And when Goro started directing his own films for
Studio Ghibli, only to be met with mostly disaster,
Hayao was ruthless in his takedown of his son, putting the craft before his relationship, much like
Jiro.
If it helps, I liked
From Up on
Poppy Hill, one of
Goro's three films.
This movie is a story about what happens when artists give up everything to make the most of their brief time in the sun.
Even if things go awry, well, the wind is rising, meaning that our chance to do something great is coming, so we must find a way to make our dreams come true.
But just as importantly, we have to find a way to live with the consequences of that as well.
I adore The
Wind Rises.
So much so that it's probably one of my favorite
Ghibli films.
The ranking is still coming, I promise.
But it's not because this movie is particularly exciting or beautiful.
It's not that the score is amazing and hopeful or that the
English dub just happens to be really good, even though it is.
It's because it has this general spirit surrounding it.
One of hope and the perseverance it takes to accomplish a dream.
Despite all the setbacks
Jiro faces in his life, he never loses the artistic passion and vigor he has for his work.
He loves creating, but it isn't a fairy tale.
Jiro sacrifices just about everything in his life, and the world promptly subverts and destroys his dream.
But there's still this sense of wonder, because at the end, he really did it.
Even if artists sometimes have to give up everything in pursuit of their dreams, and even if it isn't worth it, that still doesn't take away from the beauty of those accomplishments.
The airplanes are still majestic, even as we cry seeing
Jiro's wife leave for the sanatorium, as well as her imminent death.
Maybe my favorite thing about
The Wind Rises is that it's simply, but not unapologetically, in love with creating.
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