The advertising slogan of this film was 「生きねば」 -- do not give up no matter how tough your life is.
However, the difficulties the protagonist happen to face are very few and mild, especially considering what the average Japanese citizens went through during the war. He is born to a rich family, gets his dream job at a first-class company without any struggle whatsoever, and is soon given a chance to study abroad in Germany and keeps pursuing his dream of designing a "beautiful plane".
This was a time when young men were forced to die in the battlefields, never allowed to even have a dream except dying for the country, while the only real difficulty the protagonist faced that I could personally relate to was the fact that his wife was dying (and it was still very difficult to understand why he fell in love with his wife in the first place).
The first half of the movie was a slow paced story about a man who pursued his dream without having to face any difficulty interesting enough to observe. The second half was a sloppy tear-jerker love story starring a young woman whose character depth was as shallow as the protagonist's.
I may have been the shallow one but that was what I thought anyway.
However, the difficulties the protagonist happen to face are very few and mild, especially considering what the average Japanese citizens went through during the war. He is born to a rich family, gets his dream job at a first-class company without any struggle whatsoever, and is soon given a chance to study abroad in Germany and keeps pursuing his dream of designing a "beautiful plane".
This was a time when young men were forced to die in the battlefields, never allowed to even have a dream except dying for the country, while the only real difficulty the protagonist faced that I could personally relate to was the fact that his wife was dying (and it was still very difficult to understand why he fell in love with his wife in the first place).
The first half of the movie was a slow paced story about a man who pursued his dream without having to face any difficulty interesting enough to observe. The second half was a sloppy tear-jerker love story starring a young woman whose character depth was as shallow as the protagonist's.
I may have been the shallow one but that was what I thought anyway.