Film review: The Wind Rises tells the story of a fighter plane designer

The Wind Rises
Voiced by: Hideaki Anno, Miori Takimoto (Japanese version)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Category: I (Japanese and Cantonese versions)

"Airplanes are beautiful dreams" we're told in Hayao Miyazaki's latest feature. The same can be said of the anime maestro's own illustrious body of work. Miyazaki has made it his business to take flights of fancy, to soar in the imagination, whether in the fantasy lands of the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, or the eco-realms of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.

His 11th feature-length film - which colleagues at his company Studio Ghibli claim will be his feature film swansong - might just be Miyazaki's most personal work yet.

The Wind Rises takes viewers back to Japan in the interwar years to depict the life and work of pioneering aviation engineer Jiro Horikoshi. If this sounds like a rather curious topic, consider that the filmmaker's father ran a factory producing rudders for Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter planes designed by Jiro's team.

Moreover, with his own work immersed in the escapism of the airborne - think, for example, of My Neighbour Totoro's eponymous creature taking his friends on a nocturnal ride on a magical flying top, or Howl's Moving Castle, with its giant floating structure - it's not hard to see The Wind Rises as a final reckoning with an obsession that began in his childhood.