The Wind Rises

This weekend I finally went to see The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu). I can honestly say I’ve never felt my money more well spent than the $12 I spent on that movie ticket. I watch a lot of movies. A lot of people watch a lot of movies. So I know I’m not speaking from a minority standpoint when I say that those times when you stumble upon a movie that seems to live and breathe on its own, you feel rich as Croesus. These movies are vitally important to you. Hayao Miyazaki, the writer, director, and illustrator of the original
comic, has created many of these vitally important films, in my life at least. His films are so complex and magical and fantastic and deceptively human. You’re drawn into this fairy tale that reveals more about the hearts of men than you could learn in most philosophical texts, that I believe for a fact.

The main character of Kaze Tachinu, Horikoshi, once said of his aircraft design that “All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful”. Miyazaki’s portrayal of this man’s struggle to find a way to create the beautiful airplanes of his imaginings, only to see them in the end fly off to battle, never to return, resulted in one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever experienced. I cried (not a lot, my brothers were there, I have street cred to uphold here). say that I am recommending this movie to anyone who can possibly see it is an understatement. I’m kind of saying that you have to.

 Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre!

Disco Pigs

Disco Pigs Movie Review

WARNING: If you have not watched this movie, stop reading this post, go watch it, then come back. I realize that will be most people, but so help me if you find out what happens in this movie via a blog, I will punch myself in the face repeatedly.

This is my favorite movie of all time. I had never really had a favorite before. The Pianist was up there for sure, but there was no one movie that I could say with certainty was my favorite. Then I watched Disco Pigs. I now have a favorite movie. Hands down.

A lot of people do not understand the story in the movie, and fewer still understand the character Pig, played by Cillian Murphy. I am not going into any elaborate plot details, because if you are reading this it means you have finished the movie.I believe the ideal of the story is two young people, born in the same hospital on the same day, brought up next door to each other, connected with a cosmic spell from birth are forced to grow up. Cillian Murphy’s character Pig is perfectly contented to spend his days with Runt. As he says so beautifully in his melancholic tone “You’re my life, Runt”.  

The deep attachment that Pig and Runt have for each other is the stuff of fairy tales. They dash around on the beach together having long talks about the “color of love”. They play jokes on other people and laugh about it to each other. They are completely in sync, and at night they hold each other’s hands through holes in the walls of their two houses, Pyramus and Thisby style. Kinda. But then one day Runt discovers that she wants more, and she has to break away from Pig who is deeply in love with her, and quite literally wants nothing more out of life than to be with her. This is where people begin to misunderstand Pig. Yes, he is a bit psycho crazy. Okay, he’s a lot psycho crazy. But the common misconception is that Runt has to kill him to escape him. This is incorrect. Pig wants her to kill him because he knows that she wants, and needs, a life outside of their relationship with each other. He asks her to give him the ending to the story that he has always dreamed of: Pig and Runt, King and Queen. And so she does. After she gives him his fairy tale ending, he is able to let her go, even though it means he cannot exist in the world without her. He feels complete; he has had the ending of his dreams, and now he has to let her go by letting himself go.

It’s kind of interesting to note how different the original play and the movie are from each other, but how the mood and the general, I guess, POINT of the story is the same for both. In the film, SPOILER ALERT Pig dies at the end, after a sequence of events not even sort of present in the play, which is about 1/4th as long. And that might seem to change things a bit (like, maybe I wasn’t crying buckets and feeling like I had lost all purpose in life after the play), but a lot of the more important things are still present, like the fact that in both, Pig is removed from Runt’s life and she is finally able to accept her individuality and embrace her freedom from Pig’s smothering love. But the movie does emphasize the contrast more, by removing Runt from Pig’s life first and showing us how he dealt with that: by going stark raving mad and chasing after her. Which was totally adorable for about five minutes. Because the point of the story is that Pig’s love for Runt, while real enough, was too selfish to be sustainable. And when his love finally became selfless, he wasn’t sustainable any more (does that make any sense) and so he was willing to give up his life.

I also think that while most people do not understand Pig’s character, we all have a little bit of him inside us. We are all a little Pig, and we are all a little Runt. We all have something we need to let go of, and something that needs to let go of us.

But in the end, all we know is that we love this film. Enda Walsh weaves a magically tragic tale of young love that left us feeling weepy, and loving Cillian Murphy even more than before. This movie definitely is not for everyone, but it is for us.

 

I think I really do want for something else.

But where to, eh pal?

Where to...