Oh the world over there it’s
So hard to explain
Just like a dream’s got lost in your brain
Dancing like a fool through that forbidden wing
Waiting for the light to start shivering well
Whoever said you couldn’t move that way
Whoever said you couldn’t try
If you find there’s a little pain
You can always go back again because
You don’t ever really say goodbye
Thomas Pynchon
GRAVITY’S RAINBOW
In the last room I came across a little cabinet filled to brimming with every sort of dog treat available, all the kinds of treats I used to treat her with. I had tried to keep her interested in living with the endless promise of all those treats. Instead she stopped eating and drinking water, she could hardly walk or stand, she grew shadowy, distant, and more still. She showed one final time a faint interest in peanut butter, and in the treats, but the little plate of both left next to her remained in the end as it was untouched.
On the last day she was vulnerable and quiet and too small in my arms when I carried her, warm dust barely still formed, as fragile as woven paper, already no longer really there. Soon afterward she died, and I was forced to say goodbye. I cried, and kept crying, it’s the first time in a dream I can remember ever crying like that. I cried long and hard and continuously, like it would never end, and I would never stop. It was strange that I didn’t wake up crying. I woke instead with a clear recognition of the heaviness in my heart and a sense of being empty completely. I continued to lie there as the light began to break thinking and remembering and feeling sad.
That sadness has never left.
The poster for this film plastered large upon the outside wall of the theater as we entered proclaimed it to be “the greatest animated film the cinema has ever seen.” I thought such assertions was maybe overstating things but now that I’ve seen the film, I think the critic is possibly right or at very least, he isn’t at all wide of the mark. The Wind Rises is affecting, thoughtful, poignant and very wonderful, it had us smiling and giggling and laughing almost the entire way and by the final twenty minutes, we were sniffling and quietly crying. Also, the mysterious “Good German” character sounded in pronunciation and in prose so precisely exactly like Werner Herzog, I could not help but privately excitedly remark and take note. Of course when the credits rolled, I was delighted actually to be right. The Wind Rises is an animated antiwar love story and though I know it’s only March, I think this might already be the best and my favourite film of the year. Miyazaki is the master. This is his final film and it’s as quietly powerful as it is magnificent. Beautiful work. Highest marks.
