Based on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the early-20th-century aeronautical engineer, the film is gorgeously animated as any of animation maestro Hayao Miyazaki's previous movies (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro) while trading in his more fantastical impulses for contemplative, old-fashioned drama and period detail. Miyazaki has said he was inspired to make Wind after reading this quote from Horikoshi: ''All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.''