Monday, March 3, 2014

Cursed dreams.

The Wind Also Rises - 2.5/5
I can make some allowances for this being a true story, as it does that thing that true stories do that I hate WHICH IS TO SAY it goes off for stretches into things having nothing to do with what the film is about. I will then take back those allowances when TO MY SURPRISE I AM TO DISCOVER that they added some fictional shit in. Then why not just make that shit linear and tighter, Miyazaki-bro? Fuck that love story is what I’m trying to say. Well, too late now! It’s been committed to film! It’s hard to say it’s the central conceit of the film (because it goes elsewhere) but the most interesting question in the film is whether or not the protagonist (and we) want to live in a world without pyramids. WHICH IS TO SAY a world without beauty, but also a world that did not deliver a million-fold the pain that was involved in its creation. A million million. The search for such a beauty is Jiro’s journey, but he knows – he knows, he knows – that what he creates will be used to destroy. He is only so-so ambivalent about that. That is a problem? A storytelling problem, anyway. Jiro loves his craft so much and you want him to succeed, but you also want him to ask some goddamn questions of himself. Is art worth it when that art is dangerous. Can you condone it. Should you have your name attached to it. If someone else will do it, then let them have the credit. Maybe. The race towards the future is also a destruction of the present, because it leaves no place to look back to. It is neither right or wrong. But it’s right to at least ask the question. 

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