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In a rare interview, Hayao Miyazaki talks about why his latest movie The Wind Rises — which is opening with an English-language version in the U.S. this weekend — is also his last.
Ken Ishii / Getty Images; Studio Ghibli
When The Simpsons paid tribute to animation legend Hayao Miyazaki in January, the video quickly went viral, becoming the third most viewed Simpsons clip on YouTube ever, with nearly 10 million views.
Miyazaki, however, was not one of them.
"Unfortunately, I haven't seen that," the 73-year-old filmmaker told BuzzFeed earlier this month, in a video call conducted with a Japanese translator. "Actually, I don't watch that much TV," he added with a laugh. "I don't know how to use the internet, as well. Someone gave me an electronic dictionary, and I'm just trying to find out how to use it right now."
Anyone familiar with Miyazaki's astonishing body of work will recognize in that answer one of the central themes of his films: the tension between a simpler way of life — where one looks up words in old fashioned dictionaries — and the relentless drive of technological progress. That theme is malevolently present in Miyazaki's medieval fantasy Princess Mononoke, the first of his films that most Americans saw in a movie theater when it opened in a limited release in 1999. That theme is woven into the fanciful world of Spirited Away, which won an Academy Award in 2002 for Best Animated Feature Film, and is the highest grossing film of all time in Japan. And that theme is even front and center in one of Miyazaki's earliest features, 1984's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, an adaptation of one of his popular manga comic books.
The Wind Rises.
Walt Disney Pictures & Studio Ghibli
It is a theme that is most heartbreakingly present in Miyazaki's latest feature animated film, The Wind Rises — which, he announced last fall, is also his last. A historical epic based largely on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the aeronautical engineering genius behind Japan's deadly Zero fighter plane in World War II, the film's elegiac tone certainly makes for a fitting culmination to Miyazaki's 50-year career. (The film, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Animated Film, opens in the U.S. today in limited release, with an English-language dub featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Martin Short, Stanley Tucci, Mae Whitman, and Mandy Patinkin.) It wasn't until Miyazaki had completed the film, however, that he says he realized he would retire from feature filmmaking.
"I really felt that this was the maximum that I could give to produce an animated film," he said. "The work of animation is building up bricks and mortar, bricks and mortar. I felt I wouldn't be able to put [up] another brick."
Miyazaki has announced his retirement before, only to return to his animation company Studio Ghibli to make another feature (or three). But this time, his resolve feels permanent. And with so much of today's feature animation created using the cutting-edge perfection of computers, it's impossible not to wonder who, if anyone, will take pencil to paper to create animated films with as much bewitching — and popular — imagination. Ironically, it's exactly Miyazaki's singular devotion to his craft that has led him to leave it behind.
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