The North American trailer for Miyazaki Hayao's "Farewell Masterpiece," The Wind Rises spends a lot of time telling you to see it, rather than truly showing you much: images with little context or explanation, with the dialogue silenced. This is a pitch that will likely only appeal to folks who already know what the movie is about. Le Sigh.
The film centres around Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of Japan's World War II Zero Fighter plane. It charts his life and dreams, his education and work, some of his major contributions to Japanese aviation, and also the courtship and marriage to his wife of fragile health. The film spans nearly half a century and muses on when a creative artist of any stripe should step down and away, thus making the film a perfect living-elegy to the masterful Miyazaki's long manga and cinema career.