The Wind Rises
A weird rewatch. I still think it's incredible, but it really doesn't hit the same way now that it's no longer <PERSON>'s final statement. I still get teary-eyed at the end, but in a soft, melancholy way, as opposed to the absolutely shattering impact it had on me in 2014 when I sobbed for about 20 continuous minutes. 823
I miss that overwhelming effect, one of a handful of times a movie has left me truly inconsolable, but I wouldn't trade for it if it meant losing The Boy and the Heron. Frankly it's a huge relief that <PERSON> has opted not to leave us forever hanging on the shrugging, unsettled final note of <PERSON>'s story, the loudly implied "but how?" lingering as he exits through the bottom of frame, his ghosts having commanded him to keep living in the face of death and destruction on scales both personal and global. Not that The Boy and the Heron provides any easy answers to the ideas dangling here, but it feels much more like the product of a hard-won inner peace than The Wind Rises' rear-view ambivalence towards a life spent hunched over pencil and paper. 61