Peter’s Blog for June
This film takes its title from a poem by Paul Valéry which says, “The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!”. It is a beautiful, contemplative film made by Hayao Miyazaki, a legendary Japanese filmmaker in the twilight of his career after six decades of exploring the human spirit. Visually his films are a treat in their impressionistic depiction of nature and of the dream of love and relationship that keeps surfacing and taking flight in spite of our neglect of it.
The Wind Rises is a fictionalised biography of aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi, who helped design and develop the planes that would be used by Japan in World War II. In his dreams as a boy he meets Italian aeronautical designer Gianni Caproni and realises that although he cannot become a pilot, due to his poor eyesight, he settles for a career in engineering if he is to develop the wings he needs to fly. His ability to design aircraft is noticed soon after he leaves university and he quickly becames the engineering prodigy of his country’s developing aviation industry.
Reaching for the sky
In the film he is portrayed as an artist whose canvas is the sky in which he endeavours to fly but he realises that he must follow his dream within the constraints of industry and its practical demands. These constraints take form within a growing military industrial complex providing huge amounts of money for planes designed to be agile killing machines. Jiro would rather his planes be elegant and graceful, without guns or bomb-dropping mechanisms but he has to work within a world readying itself for war.
Even though the director of the film, Hayao Miyazaki, is an outspoken pacifist he doesn’t criticise Jiro for his role in perfecting the machinery of death in advance of World War II. Rather, he laments the way that such talent is twisted and such artistry has to be put at the service of the ugly machinations of nations at war. The film does not hide its scepticism about modernity nor its romantic fondness for nature that it portrays in such a gentle and intelligent way.
The loss of so much that is beautiful and life-giving
The Wind Rises is set against the ominous modern march to replace the pastoral with the industrial and the consequent loss of so much that is beautiful and life-giving. The beauty of nature is stunningly portrayed in an impressionistic way and in colours that at times made me gasp. In contrast to this the effects of urban and industrial development are portrayed in drab and even ugly colours. Yet it is against such a bleak background that Jiro’s enthusiasm and imagination take flight.
The film is mainly about someone reaching for the sky, for the sublime, the beautiful, for what transcends the limitations and our destructive ways of abusing the material world. So in spite of all the constraints Jiro always remains a dreamer and an artist who wants the sky for his limit and not to be confined to a very limited kind of life represented by the barnyard in the following story.
The Sky`s The Limit
There was once a poultry farmer who was given a present of an eagle`s egg. He decided to experiment with it, so he put it among some eggs a hen was hatching out. In due course it emerged with the other chicks and grew up with these. Even though it was never quite the same as them, it adapted itself to their ways and always thought of itself, and acted, as one of them. So it spent its time with the other chickens within the strict confines of the barnyard. One day when it was about a year old its eye was caught by the inspiring sight of an eagle in full flight and something stirred within it. However, its gaze was soon brought back to earth, by a cock telling it to stop star-gazing and to get on with the job.
Now, there are two endings to the story. One has the young eagle putting its head back down as it had been told to do and continuing for the rest of its days within the very limited world of the barnyard. The other ending is, that the young eagle inspired by the vision in the sky, stretched its wings and took off. From then on it was no longer confined to the barnyard but had the sky for its limits.
This story about having the sky for our limit symbolises the aspirations of the dreamer and the artist in each of us striving not to let the demands of what is urgent drown out the still small voice urging us to follow our innate dream of love and intimacy, of beauty and joy. Having the sky for our limit gives us perspective or lets us see the big picture and the relative importance of everything in it so that we are not consumed by what is just urgent.
How darkness makes us appreciate the light
The Wind Rises focuses a lot on life’s hardships such as the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, the years of depression, the tuberculosis epidemic, the descent into war – all of which create what the director calls “a sense of stagnation more intense than the one hanging over Japan today”. Gerard Manley Hopkins, who depicted these hardships in a way that few poets could rival, has a beautiful image of the odd glimpse of the sublime which “lights a lovely mile”. It calls forth the vision we get when the sun breaks through the clouds and lights up patches of an otherwise dark or gloomy landscape. These are moments when comfort or joy is given room to grow, moments for the poet when we glimpse God’s winning smile.
MY own heart let me have more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst ’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
’s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.
It is in Jiro’s falling in love with Nahoko that we experience another even more important place in which we discover what is sublime in life or discover an “opening to the top”. One well known reviewer speaks of their relationship as “A vivid depiction of human kindness that is touching despite the powerful undertone of sadness. In The Wind Rises friendship sprouts from disaster and love can be seen to end in tears. Yet, throughout, the film never tries to irreparably upset its audience. It’s balanced, and it flows perfectly”.
The style with which people relate
What I found most strikingly beautiful about The Wind Rises is the style with which Jiro, Nahoko and a number of other women in the film loved and related. There is an attractiveness about them that makes their presence in the story not only good but beautiful or whatever word we might use for people who relate in a stylish or artful way. For people not used to finding life’s essential beauty in the art of loving or in the style with which people love and relate there is a need get in touch with the people in our lives who exhibit this beauty in a way that makes it real, tangible and credible. From the time I was a student and was learning about how we tend to see reality in terms of what is true, good and beautiful I became aware that the first two ways of seeing the world around us have got most attention while beauty has remained nebulous or has even disappeared from view.
The ugly absence of courtesy
I was reminded of this absence of beauty from large areas of life today when watching a documentary on television recently called, Blurred Lines. It was a study of a new aggressiveness between men and women especially among young people in England today. For me it was a shocking revelation of how rough and harsh people’s way of relating have become and especially by how abusive of women men’s language tends to be. It made me wonder where has respect and courtesy gone to. When the woman who made the programme asked a well known journalist what he thought of this situation he said that we have to accept it as part of life today and that women who complain about it should as he said “man up” and to give as good as they get. Germaine Greer, whose life’s interest has been this relationship between men and women, said on the programme that though women have become more prominent in all areas of public life the relationships between men and women have in her experience deteriorated.
An “ever-increasing splendour”
Over against this sobering picture of the lowering of respect and courtesy in public life we all have experience of family and friendship where we find ourselves significant and valued. Within these relationships we may find that we and others relate with style and are at our best, that there is, dare we say it, a splendour about our lives. This reality is strikingly expressed in the film, Calendar Girls, when Jim who is a horticulturist says to his wife in a moment of Yorkshire honesty, “The women of Yorkshire are like the flowers of Yorkshire, each stage of their growth is more glorious than the last but the final stage is the most glorious of all”. Then after a pause, he quips, “And then they all go to seed”. This provides a wonderful foundation for Paul’s vision of us when he says, “We are transfigured in ever-increasing splendour into his (Christ’s) own image, and the transformation comes from the Lord who is the Spirit”. (2 Cor 3:18)
The centrality of style or beauty to life
This beauty or style with which people love and relate is so central to our dream as human beings that it is sad that we don’t notice its presence and cultivate it. I have become more aware of this elegance with which most people relate, especially since the election of Pope Francis. He seems to me to embody a way of relating that people find very attractive. Is this because the way he loves and relates is very close to the way Jesus loved and related with the people he meets in the Gospel story? It is this style with which people love and relate that the historian John O’Malley sees as the central issue in the Second Vatican Council. He says in the concluding chapter of his book, What happened at Vatican 2?
“Vatican 2 taught many things, but few more important than the style of relationships that was to prevail in the church. Its style of discourse was the medium that conveyed the message. It did not, therefore ‘define’ the teaching but taught it on almost every page through the form and vocabulary it adopted. In so doing it issued an implicit call for a change of style – a style less autocratic and more collaborative, a style willing to seek our and listen to different viewpoints and to take them into account, a style eager to find common ground with the other, a style open and above board, a style less unilateral in its decision-making, a style committed to fair play and to working with persons and institutions outside the Catholic community, a style that assumes innocence until guilt is proven, a style that eschews secret oaths, anonymous denunciations and inquisitional tactics… We must respect the law inscribed on people’s hearts by God calling them to love”.
John O’Malley sees style, not as an “outward adornment” but as an expression of a Gospel way of seeing people and of valuing them. He says “A style choice is an identity choice, a personality choice, a choice in this instance about what kind of institution the council wanted the church to be. It was the outward expression of the adoption of an inner pattern of values. Style sometimes misunderstood as merely an outward ornament of speech, an outer garment adorning a thought, is really the ultimate expression of meaning. … The final documents are more intent on winning inner assent to truths and values and on raising appreciation for them. To a large extent they engage in a rhetoric of praise and congratulation”.
In his book he suggests that at stake were “almost two different visions of Catholicism”: as it strove to move “from commands to invitations, from laws to ideals, from threats to persuasion and from monologue to dialogue, from ruling to serving, from withdrawn to integrated, from vertical to horizontal, from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to friendship, from rivalry to partnership, from suspicion to trust, from static to ongoing, from passive to active engagement, from fault-finding to appreciation, from prescriptive to principled, from behaviour modification to inner appropriation.” He adds that there was nothing new in the use of these words. “Yet, taken as a whole, they convey the sweep of a newly and forcefully specified style of the church that the Second Vatican Council held up for contemplation, admiration and actualisation”. In its use of words such as these ‘the council devised a profile of the ideal christian’.
The Wind Rises highlights for me the reality that in three specific ways “the world is charged with the grandeur of God”
There is first of all the grandeur or beauty of nature that Mark Kermode, in his review of this film in the Observer, sees as “a rich treat for the eye and soul alike”
Then there is the beauty of the relationship between Jiro and Nahoko that Mark Kermode speaks of “a heartbreakingly touching love story in which the wan Nahoko becomes Jiro’s muse, grounding his head-in-air flights of fancy in the tangible soil of human contact, love, and inevitably, loss. reaching for the sky or the sublime in a grim world”.
Finally there is the sense of the beautiful or the sublime in the style with which Jiro and the women in the story relate. It is their art of loving that left me with the feeling as I came out of the cinema that I had seen something strikingly beautiful. Yet it is a vision that is all around me in the street outside the cinema if I only have eyes to see it. It is in the courtesy of people thanking the buss driver before they get off, the wonderful affection of parents for their children that regularly strikes me when I walk in the local park or when, to my embarrassment, people offer me their seat on public transport – surely I don’t look that old or decrepit. We are offered in these moments of kindness a glimpse of the reality that “the Grace of God is in Courtesy”.
Courtesy
Of Courtesy, it is much less
Than Courage of Heart or Holiness,
Yet in my walks it seems to me
That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.
On monks I did in Storrington fall,
They took me straight into their hall;
I saw three pictures on a wall,
And Courtesy was in them all.
The first the Annunciation;
The second the Visitation;
The third the Consolation,
Of God that was Our Lady’s Son.
The first was of St. Gabriel;
On wings of flame from Heaven he fell;
And as he went upon one knee
He shone with Heavenly Courtesy.
Our Lady out of Nazareth rode –
It was her month of heavy load;
Yet was her face both great and kind,
For Courtesy was in Her mind.
The third it was our little Lord,
Whom all the Kings in arms adored;
He was so small you could not see
His large intent of Courtesy.
Our Lord, that was Our Lady’s Son,
Go bless you, People, one by one;
My Rhyme is written, my work is done.
(Hilaire Belloc)