That said, it's fair to be uncertain of what the film itself carries across, regardless of what Miyazaki or any of the other filmmakers intended. But I don't think it's actually very ambiguous. When Jiro meets Hans Castorp, Castorp tells Jiro how dangerous the Nazis and the intentions of the Japanese government are, and then mentions how he and Jiro have both come to a place where they can simply forget about it all. The world is going to hell, and they ignore it because they reject the burden of taking it seriously.
He helps people who are right in front of him, but does not withdraw from the war effort. This is a film about a man who knows what the right thing is, but only does it when it doesn't ask too much of him, and it's trying to involve the audience in his subjective experience of what that is. His visions of flight, his early interactions with Nahoko, and his wedding are all portrayed beautifully. Much of the film's final act depicts intimate moments between Jiro and Nahoko. We sense that they really love each other.
At some point in its production, the film had an ending in which Jiro was condemned to purgatory for what he did. Its actual ending doesn't go for an external punishment.
Shortly after Jiro meets Nahoko, she chooses to go to a sanatorium in the hope that she will recover from tuberculosis. "I want a life with Jiro," she says. But she soon returns to Jiro's side, believing he needs her moral support while he works. Everyone around them, especially Jiro's physician sister Kayo, protests that this arrangement places Nahoko's health at risk. But Jiro and Nahoko both insist they have accepted the risk, and that they embrace their time together even if it's short.
But on the day of the test run of Jiro's Mitsubishi A5M airplane, Nahoko decides on her own to return to the sanatorium. Before she leaves, there is a brief moment when Nahoko is alone, and we see her drop the smile she normally wears for Jiro and others. She leaves notes in their room, tells everyone she's going out for a walk, then never returns.
She and Jiro talk a great deal to their families and friends about accepting her fate. But the way it goes in the end doesn't reflect that. At least at some point, she wanted to live. And at some point, she couldn't bear to remain with them anymore. She talks as if she would be content to die as long as Jiro was by her side, but she turns away from that. We don't get to learn why.
Some viewers are bothered because they think Jiro should be punished more severely or portrayed more poorly. I think the combination of this human intimacy with the film's focus on Jiro's decision to ignore what's happening around him makes the film's final blow hit harder. After Nahoko dies, he not only experiences loss. He is confronted with Nahoko's loss. There was a future she longed for, a silent dissatisfaction she felt as it slipped away. The film Liz and the Blue Bird achieves an immensely powerful, uplifting climax by expanding outside the main character's personal world; The Wind Rises does this in the opposite direction.
None of the ambiguities about Nahoko's true feelings are clearly resolved in the film--but that's the point. By the time Jiro comes to ask about them, it's too late. In the final scene, Jiro enters a world of dreams. He speaks to his vision of Gianni Caproni, the ethereal manifestation of his own conscience. Caproni tells Jiro that Nahoko has been waiting for him for a long time. He sees her in an open field and approaches her, but she stops him and says: "you must live." Then she disappears. "You must live" might be a nice thing to say in another context, but here it means one thing: Jiro is alive, Nahoko is not. The separation between them is totally unbridgeable, because he wasted the time he had to close it.
Comments
Post a Comment