Though a US release date has yet to be decided upon, Japan needn’t wait too much longer for Hayao Miyazaki’s long-awaited return to the directing chair with The Wind Rises, as the Studio Ghibli film is due out there in under one month’s time (July 20th). History tells us it won’t come stateside until about a year from now, which makes this initial teaser for the film such a pleasant sight.
Short as it is, the images have a sort of poetry to them that you only get with a Miyzaki-directed film. It isn’t enough that he simply script a film, although it never hurts. Where Miyazaki does best is behind the reigns. Compare his last directorial effort, Ponyo, to its immediate successor in the Studio Ghibli canon, The Secret World of Arriety, whose script was contributed by the team of Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa, who would also team up once again for From Up on Poppy Hill. Albeit a minor film for Miyazaki, there’s no mistaking Ponyo for another director’s film, nor is there any confusing him and his son, who directed From Up on Poppy Hill.
An ignorant few might pin that on his films having to them a supposed sameness, but I say they’re alike only in that they’re distinct, his guiding hand obvious in the proceedings. Which is to say that one can see echoes of his, and Studio Ghibli’s, other films in the images that the teaser treats us to, except there’s enough to set it apart as its own film, one that I fully expect to soar to the same heights that we see Jirō Horikoshi’s plane attain.
The Wind Rises pulls its inspiration from Miyazaki’s own manga, as well as a novel by Tatsuo Hori, and includes the voice-acting talents of Hideaki Anno, Miori Takimoto, Steven Alpert, Morio Kazama, Keiko Takeshita, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Mirai Shida, Mansai Nomura and Masahiko Nishimura.
