What filmmaking techniques does The Wind Rises use?

CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in The Wind Rises (2013): Autobiographical Distance, Dream Logic Structure, Animation as Emotional Amplifier and Observational Restraint.

Who directed The Wind Rises?

Hayao Miyazaki directed The Wind Rises, released in 2013. CineCode also covers The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), Porco Rosso (1992).

What films are similar to The Wind Rises?

Films that share techniques with The Wind Rises include The Pianist (2002), Stalker (1979), Lady Bird (2017), Minari (2020).

Animation · Drama · Biography · Romance

The Wind Rises

Hayao Miyazaki, 2013

Jiro Horikoshi is the engineer who designed the Zero, Japan's World War II fighter plane. He chases his dream of creating beautiful aircraft while falling in love with a woman dying of tuberculosis. The film keeps both the beauty of what he made and the destruction it enabled in view at the same time. This is Miyazaki thinking through the bargain an artist makes.

3 Narrative 1 Editing

At a glance

The Wind Rises is a 2013 animation, drama, biography and romance film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (3 narrative and 1 editing), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, The Pianist uses several of the same techniques.

Narrative

Autobiographical Distance

Drawing on the filmmaker's own life but keeping it at arm's length, often through a fictional stand-in. The result is precise and unsentimental, and it can question how memory flatters us.

How this film uses it

Miyazaki has spoken of the film as a self-portrait. It's about the artist who creates beautiful things knowing they will be used for destruction. The dream of flight can't be separated from the military purpose that pays for it. The historical Horikoshi lets the animator ask his own questions about what art costs.

Where to see it

Jiro's recurring dream conversations with Caproni. The Italian engineer appears across time as a mentor and someone to talk things through with. These dream sequences are where Miyazaki most directly thinks about the artist's responsibility.

Narrative

Dream Logic Structure

Arranging scenes the way a dream moves, where one image leads to the next by feeling or association. Events don't follow normal cause and effect.

How this film uses it

Jiro's dreams of flight and of Caproni hold together the way real dreams do. Wind, aircraft and conversation exist in spaces that follow the rules of emotion and ignore the rules of physics. Nevertheless, the film treats the dreams as just as real as the waking scenes of engineering and romance.

Where to see it

The recurring dream in which Caproni's aircraft fills the sky. The Italian engineer and the Japanese boy share a dreamed language about the beauty and cost of flight.

Editing

Animation as Emotional Amplifier

Using animation, for a whole film or for short sequences inside live action, to make emotions hit harder. Drawn images can show inner feelings that realistic footage can't reach.

How this film uses it

Miyazaki shows the 1923 earthquake entirely through hand-drawn animation: the ground moving, the city falling, the fire spreading across Tokyo. The drawn disaster hits harder emotionally than any live-action or digital version would. Animation shows the catastrophe the way it feels from inside, with no observer's distance.

Where to see it

The Great Kanto Earthquake sequence. The drawn ground splits and the fire spreads in patterns. Animation can follow those patterns more precisely than any camera could.

Narrative

Observational Restraint

Watching events from a measured distance with no swelling music, tear-jerking close-ups or showy camera moves. The film trusts what happens to carry the weight on its own.

How this film uses it

Miyazaki films Jiro's love for Naoko and his love for aircraft with the same quiet attention. He never points out the parallel. He trusts you to feel that the woman and the plane both receive the same devotion and meet the same tragedy.

Where to see it

Jiro working late at night with one hand holding Naoko's as she lies beside him. The scene is restrained. It holds everything the film has refused to say directly about beauty, loss and what creation costs.

Questions

The Wind Rises: quick answers

What filmmaking techniques does The Wind Rises use?: CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in The Wind Rises (2013): Autobiographical Distance, Dream Logic Structure, Animation as Emotional Amplifier and Observational Restraint.
Who directed The Wind Rises?: Hayao Miyazaki directed The Wind Rises, released in 2013. CineCode also covers The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), Porco Rosso (1992).
What films are similar to The Wind Rises?: Films that share techniques with The Wind Rises include The Pianist (2002), Stalker (1979), Lady Bird (2017), Minari (2020).

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