The Wind Rises

“Would you prefer a world with the pyramids or a world without?” My life is better because this movie exists. I would go so far as to say thousands of lives are better because this movie exists. It very easy to devalue our own art-making and the art making of others as less significant than the darkness and evil, and, more potently, the ambivalence around us, for, if nothing matters, then, certainly, art must matter the least. But in spite of it all, we have The Pyramids and we have airplanes. These manmade beauties aren’t escapes from reality or dampers on the evil, but very practical and deathly necessary reminders that our time, our love, the life inside of us matters. These things have made my life better by no quantifiable scale, but simply because they come from a shared dream and a shared language. When we begin to measure the worth of art in the profit of its returns, we’ve lost sight of it entirely.