Jun 17, 2020
I think this movie may be the pinacle of unused potential.
Before I watched this movie I expected something marvellous, because of the responses I heard/read over the Years on the web. Now that I have watched the movie, I´m very much underwhelmed with this film at hole.
One problem I had repeatedly over the course of the movie were the multiple not closer specified time skips. These time skips sometimes came right there when I was expecting something in terms of more character/relationship development. They made me feel like was missing out on letting me get invested in the unfolding drama between Jirou and Naoko.
...
As this movie may be an biographical inspired piece of art by the Grandmaster Hayao Miazaki himself, it makes me feel like it only wanted to tell a plain story and not to take us, the viewers, onto a jerney to experience the story told. This may seem a bit weird, but I hope you understand what I mean.
My claim for the unused potential isn´t something I thought from the beginning, but started to notice around halfway through the movie. The first major event that made wonder was the arc with our pair meeting at the summerhotel. I think this could have been a great prelude to letting us viewers see a possibly sweet romance between Jirou and Naoko unfold. The few scenes we got were only an appetizer for me and left me hungry for more. The proposal wasn´t something build up to and Naoko´s illnes didn´t seem to make much of an impact for the surrounding characters. Following this
The best part of the movie are it´s picture and sound design. The Sounddesign is exeptional for my demannds. The only limmiting factor is in my opinion the Voiceacting. Most of it is avarage, but shines in comparison to Hideaki Anno´s voice. I never heard the voice of a protagonist bugging me so much. It didn´t feel fitting at all. So rough and stale and old for an energetic young man like jirou. Naoko´s VA on the other handwas brilliant and allmost heartwarming (It probably would have been heartmelting for me if i would have gotten to know her as a character more).
One other remarkable aspect of Arrt in this movie combines the diciplines of visual and accustic art: the presentation of technology. The accuracy was stunning both in picture and sound, but especially in the technical drawings for the Airplanes. although this part was artisticly stunning it still left things to be desired, namely expansion and explanation on the plot.
Oh till now I didn´t address the setting of the Movie: Especially in teh later part of the movie, the looming WWII should have been more prevelant in the minds of these working in a war essential industry. But I couldnt find anything of that sort
I think I made this in a confusing order, so for me to keep things together: The Movie teased many things to make the audience(me) hungry for more, but didn´t expand on them futher. This is the case for Jirou´s solo story as well as for the storyfor our couple Naoko&Jirou. in one way or the other I think the two parts hindered each other as well as beeing hindered by the biographical format spanning over multiple decades.
Still, the most underwhelming point in the movie was the Ending. Jirou meeting his dream friend, which tells him: Yeah your inspirational phase is over and by the way your love is dead,
while Jirou just thinks about his planes not comming back. This portion made me almost outragous. This could have been the peek of the movie drama and personal conflicts but surprise surprise, drama fet compleatly missing which is the biggest unused potential imo. Intertvined with that is the absence of romantical continuety. Many Opportunitiest cast aside for what... nothing to relate to as far as I could feel.
Probably the missed opportunities to let the viewership get really invested into the characters led the other problems to bare peaking into the really really underwhalming ending
I think if I had to summarize my critique(rant) into one sentence in neutral speech it would be: The movie only scratched the surface of the story and left depth to be desired, especially in the moments of great opportunities for Romance/Drama.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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