★★★★★
Five Stars

A field of corn stands still, as dawn breaks in the first scene of The Wind Rises. Soon, though, the wind picks up, a dream begins, and so does the story. The eleventh of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s career, it tells the tale of a young boy growing up alongside the simple dream of making planes fly, in the shadow of the Japanese militaristic ambition of the 1920s and 30s. 

It is made up of the same components that have come to be expected from the father and founder of Studio Ghibli, Japan’s world-famous animation studio. Beautiful scenes follow on from each other, as sorrow and humour is drawn out from images in ways that should seemingly be only be possible from live action. Unlike Miyazaki’s previous work, The Wind Rises flows slow, imbued with a sort of languid, pensive beauty that lies in contrast to the rapid action of films such as Spirited Away, or Howl’s Moving Castle. This works though; it is the goals and relationships of the characters that keeps this film going, rather than sequential events. It feels as though Miyazaki has finally, with his last work, been given the space to slow down the pace. 

The subject matter, in which warplanes are designed and made in anticipation of the Second World War, has drawn criticism from audiences both in Japan and abroad. However, it seems as though those accusing Miyazaki of failing to properly condemn the actions of those involved have found focus in the wrong place. The film is not a commentary, but a story – a story about a young man who finds passion in the power of flight.

The narrative demonstrates the amazing ability of the human mind to validate its actions, no matter what the consequences. Provocatively, perhaps, during one dream sequence the hero, Jiro is asked by his mentor Marconi, ‘‘Which would you rather choose, a world with pyramids, or without?’’ This chance to engage with the repercussions of his actions however is passed over by Jiro. He replies simply, ‘‘I want to build beautiful airplanes.’’

The film’s dream sequences see Jiro recognise the disastrous results of the flights taken by the machines he has made. Time after time, planes fall to the ground, becoming grey, lifeless wreckage. The colours and shapes used to represent this destruction bring the mind back to the fallen civilisations seen in Miyazaki’s previous work Castle in the Sky, or Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, where advanced societies are brought low by their quest for power through technology. Here, though a statement is not made on the problems of society, it is made on the overpowering and amazing ability of Jiro, and his colleagues, to reach for a dream no matter the consequences. 

The film is an incredible and powerful way for Miyazaki to finish his career. Beyond the context in which it is placed, it is a touching love story about relationships in the face of overwhelming creative passion. And, although it is stationed in an adult realism that may come as a surprise following works such as My Neighbour Totoro, or Ponyo, it is, simply, about the power of dreams. As one character proclaims, standing on the tip of an airplane wing, soaring over fields of green, ‘‘Yes, this is a dream. The world’s a dream.’’

★★★☆☆
Three Stars

It is difficult to stifle the childish enthusiasm that grows inside over a film like Godzilla. There is something gloriously gratifying about seeing an enormous lizard surge dramatically from the ocean and lay waste to all before him. Sadly, in this big-budget American remake, made 60 years after Godzilla first rampaged onto the screen in 1954, a giant monster toppling skyscrapers and roaring gratuitously at every opportunity is the film’s only commendable facet.

Bryan Cranston (of Breaking Bad fame) plays Joe Brody, an engineer-turned-conspiracy-nut, whose wife (Juliette Binoche) was killed in a nuclear disaster apparently brought on by an earthquake at Janjira Nuclear Plant in Japan. When he and his despairing son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), an explosives expert in the US Navy, discover an active facility inside the deserted zone, they realise that (surprise, surprise) Brody was right all along, and the Japanese government are in a film that forgoes the process of inadvertently awakening a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) that has lain dormant for millennia. 

But this is not Godzilla; it is an enormous winged spider-like creature, that subsequently flies off to awaken its female counterpart in Nevada and, you guessed it, provokes the anger of Godzilla, who has been hiding in the Pacific for decades. The subsequent three-way monster battle rages from Japan to Honolulu to Las Vegas to San Francisco, with us puny humans desperately trying to nuke anything that poses a threat.  

The cast is woefully undistinguished, with Cranston supplying the film’s only memorable performance. His endearingly passionate Brody is utterly compelling and the brief scenes in which he and his wife interact are charmingly believable, which only serves to heighten the gut-wrenching sadness of her death. Taylor-Johnson is regrettably miscast as Ford; he seems much more suited to comedy, given his sterling performances in both Kick-Ass films. Ken Wantanabe is underemployed as expert scientist Ichiro Serizawa and Elizabeth Olsen is forgettable as Ford’s anxious wife Elle.

Godzilla is the unquestionable star. He is strikingly impressive, as are his alien-looking MUTO adversaries. The film’s slow build-up to the first MUTO’s appearance is masterfully done, helped by Cranston’s excellence and Alexandre Desplat’s thunderously ominous score. There are shades of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim about the various monster battles throughout, and although their lack of imagination occasionally crystallises into repetitiveness, they are undeniably exhilarating nonetheless. 

Disappointingly, the 2014 Godzilla lacks any of the political relevance of its Japanese original. 1954 Godzilla was a pertinent metaphor for the atomic bombs that had devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki just 9 years earlier; the destruction Godzilla caused was a reflection of the devastation of August 1945 and the film sounded a cautionary note about the development of nuclear power.

This version, despite the opening sequence’s ill-disguised similarities to the Fukushima incident in March 2011, is comparatively lacking in moral observations. Nuclear power is just the MUTOs’ food source and atomic bombs are just another weapon to be used against them. In truth, humanity itself is entirely missing after the MUTOs appear; humans are relegated to a supporting role, resulting in an unshakable shallowness, and all the audience is left with is some well-realised, if uninspired CGI set-pieces.

Ultimately, director Gareth Edwards has produced a film that forgoes emotional content in its predilection for CGI action. One could argue that the two are incompatible with a big-budget summer blockbuster such as this, in which all-out monster carnage is the primary selling point. However, a host of successful ‘disaster’ movies prove otherwise: Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day, Steven Spielberg’s 2005 remake of War of the Worlds, and even the first two Jurassic Park films. Commendable as it is for its impressive CGI, Godzilla’s lack of humanity renders it disappointingly mediocre. 

I first came across the ex-Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks a few years ago, in discussion with Richard Dawkins. Here he made the wonderfully unflinching statement that “without faith there is no hope”. It’s always impressive when people are prepared to say things which go against the grain of society and this, I think, counts.

It’s perhaps hard to argue that The Dignity of Difference is literature as such, but it is an incredibly important book, written with great clarity, and with radical ideas from the unexpected source of Orthodox Judaism. Published in 2002, Sacks is inevitably driven by 9/11, a fact apparent in the book’s subtitle, which declares that it will explain “how to avoid the clash of civilizations”.

Sacks’ book deals with the problems of globalization and he argues that the only way forward is to make space for difference – to see that everyone has a story and a faith just as valid as the next man’s.

In fact, the first edition of this book caused uproar in the Orthodox community. Sacks made a distinction between religion and God, arguing that, “God is universal, religion is particular.” Thus, he is in effect said that all religions are different expressions of the same God, or, as he put it, that God “has spoken to mankind through many languages, through Judaism to Jews, Christianity to Christians, Islam to Muslims”. Here we had an important religious leader, of a strongly traditional faith, taking the line of a universal God – that every religion is, in its own way, right.

Unfortunately, this enlightened text was not to remain unmolested, and later that year a reprint was issued, modifying the ‘of- fending’ passage. He still admits that other faiths can find their own relationship with God, but the language used is very much toned down and less paradigm-shifting.

Speaking about the incident, Sacks says that changing the passage was one of the hardest decisions he has ever made, but that he in the end felt duty-bound to listen to his Orthodox advisors. In a sense, Sacks’ message is no different to that which we hear all the time: love, compassion and forgiveness all bring peace and happiness. But he presents it here in a new, far from wishy-washy way, facing directly the issues of faith which define our global world.

It is the blandest cliché to state in a conversation about art that in its contemporary form, it has little to offer a viewer. However, Martin Creed’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery proves that generalization correct. Unfortunately Creed would be delighted by this view. Even the exhibition’s title questions, ‘What’s the point of it?’. Shamelessly imitating Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’, Creed’s work is supremely unoriginal. It asks the interminable question of “what is art?”, while offering no new answers. The exhibition is enjoyable, especially for those who like complaining, but it is unimpressive.

Creed gained national notoriety in 2001 after winning the Turner Prize. His winning exhibit was an empty room with lights turning on and off. Unsurprisingly, it won few fans. Educated at the Slade Art School and University College London, he has received an impressive artistic training. Sadly, this pedigree is visible in very few of his works. Since his Turner Prize win, Creed has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions across Europe and the United States. Over his career, he has won fans and critics in equal measure, with his provocative questioning of art and its contemporary impact proving a divisive.

According to the press release, “his art transforms everyday materials and actions into surprising meditations on existence and the invisible structures that shape our lives”. That is an extremely generous view. Painfully smug in its attempts to provoke the viewer, it does so in entirely the same fashion as the Dadaists in the 1920s. Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ issued a provocative challenge to the art establishment. It declares that, due to his status as an artist, what he produces, even if he had not made the work itself, was art. It was ground breaking and, ironically, intrinsically original. Now the idea has been done to death. ‘Work No 79’, a piece of Blu-Tack attached to a wall, does not provoke precisely because it is following an extremely well established art trend. In a way the exhibition’s most outstanding feature is Creed’s inability to move beyond Duchamp and break new ground. It is unsurprising that so many of the works are supplied ‘courtesy of the artist’. It seems art buyers are gullible, but not that gullible. Pleasantly, ‘Work No 268’ is a notable exception to the dross. The infuriating smugness of many of the other exhibits is blissfully absent, as the work embraces an honest sense of fun.

This installation lacks pretention; it consists of a room of the gallery that has been filled with balloons in which the viewer can, and is invited to, get lost in. Covered in hair, presumably unintentionally, and piled almost high enough to cover the ceiling, this single work offers the immersion and amusement which the whole exhibition is intended to provide. Some visitors have left their own messages on the balloons, including “I got naked here”. They probably did.

It works precisely because this installation is devoid of pretentiousness. It is fun, engaging and amusing, bearing a strong similarity to some of Anthony Gormley’s installations without losing a sense of originality. An exhibition of more similar installations would have been a marked improvement on what is actually presented.

Admittedly this isn’t an unanimous view. Some have lauded this exhibition as the greatest living British artist’s return to form in a playful and masterful display. I found little evidence to support this. One can see meaning in anything, but there is a certain clumsy laziness in exhibiting scrunched up pieces of paper. For particularly enthused fans, this work can be purchased in the gift shop for over a hundred pounds – there did not seem to be many takers.

In parts the exhibition is listless. An erect penis and footage of women vomiting are the clumsiest, most unoriginal works on show. They are an attempt to shock the viewer, but images such as these have long since lost their cultural stigma. Considering Creed’s reputation, this exhibition could have truly innovative; it is a shame he felt no such impetus, offering instead an unimpressive collection of jumbled, unoriginal rubbish, which carries little more than an impression of his smug sense of self satisfaction. As it seems he is an artist who can get away with anything, perhaps that was his intention after all.