Hayao Miyazaki's "The Wind Rises" (Kazetachinu) is unlike his previous features and is more a contemplation on war and circumstances than a perilous adventure.

No one's life is threatened. No girl struggles to make her way and resolve some problem. Here we have an actual person who did struggle with a real problem: Using the most available material in Japan to make fighter airplanes. At the time, German manufacturers made their airplanes out of metal. Japan is a metal poor country. Jiro Horikoshi was able to design the Zero WWII fighter--a zippy little airplane that at first out maneuvered the airplanes flown by the Allies.

Miyazaki imagines the near-sighted boy who dreamed of being a pilot but had to settle for designing airplanes instead. And Miyazaki adds a gentle doomed romance.

Jiro's dreams come alive, bringing him into contact with an Italian count who designed airplanes. If you dream of flying and have loved the imagery of flying that come from Studio Ghibli, you'll enjoy this gentle movie.

Sometimes war leads to innovation and sometimes we don't celebrate the technological innovations of the defeated nations. Horikoshi's innovations did results in deaths, but doesn't have those creepy ethical complications that the German (and Japanese) research (and torture) come with.

If you missed the festival screenings, "The Wind Rises" is playing for one week at the Landmark. Otherwise, it will be back in theaters for a wider release in February.

AFI Fest: 'The Fake'

This dark Korean animated feature, "The Fake," illustrates how easy it is to incite violence. Watching it, I wanted to slap the two main female characters and yell, "Get a grip" or the equivalent in Korean.

Director/writer Yeon Sang-Ho takes us to a town doomed to extinction: A dam will flood the are and all the residents must move, using the compensation money. You get the idea that the brighter bulbs in this neighborhood, left to shine somewhere else. As our protagonist, Min-Chul, we had a boozing, gambling man who beats both his wife and his daughter. His wife's reaction is to beg, cry and pray. His daughter mouths off, but she, too, doesn't really fight back. He's trouble, in an obvious package. You wish his wife and daughter would leave him. The daughter eventually does, but not in a good way and he "rescues" her. 

Less obvious is the evil that lurks in the smooth manners and nice suit of the the local church elder, Choi, and even the earnest Father Sung.

Director Yeon said in a post-screening Q&A that he didn't mean to criticize religion so much as he wanted to show how the truth coming from a bad person can be ignored by people while lies of a slick, clean cut person will be accepted.  We have seen the minister as a con-man before, but here the Father Sung is being used, the father Min-Chul uses his wife and daughter and Choi uses all of them. 

There is an epiphany which seems to support faith and give Min-Chul redemption, but will you really care? This animated feature is for mature audiences because of violent content and sexual situations.  "The Fake" might be hard to find outside of film festivals.