So, when I first watched The Wind Rises when it came out in theaters, I could have sworn it had a brief scene of a woman breastfeeding, during which her breast had become exposed briefly in full view. Having just watched it again, I did not see anything inappropriate. So maybe I missed it on second watching, or maybe it was never there. Anyway this movie makes the clean list, but please don’t blame me if that scene is actually there.

This is a wonderful movie. While historically based, there are many aspects of it that differ from reality (pretty much Jiro’s entire personal life), but many of the work related aspects of his life seems to be fairly accurate. Additionally, the earthquake early on in the movie is likely the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923. Anyway about the movie itself. The Wind Rises follows the life of Jiro Horikoshi, who was the lead designer of a number of Japanese WWII aircraft, including the fighter commonly known as the “Japanese Zero” fighter.

While there is very little action, this movie in no way felt slow and only occasionally did it feel like a documentary. It was more like sitting in the living room listening to your grandfather tell stories of his life. Documentaries feel slow to me because of the detached nature of them. Because this is about Jiro’s life, and generally from his point of view it feels much more like an actual movie, which in truth it is.

From a cultural perspective, you get to see a lot of early 1900’s era Japan and how they lived. From a general perspective you get to see lots of things that we take for granted now days – like Aluminum airplanes instead of wood and cloth.