The most recent work by Japanese animation mastermind Hayao Miyazaki is a nested doll story. The events of The Boy and the Heron transpire like dreams inside dreams, with the actual world smoothly blending into the fantastical setting.
The 124-minute film from Studio Ghibli, the production firm of Hayao Miyazaki, has been released in both English and the original Japanese with subtitles. Among the elements that cause magic and turmoil for young Mahito are fire, wind, and water. Though it’s said to be the final one the 83-year-old Miyazaki will ever make, you never know.
The Second World War provides the backdrop, a time of needless loss and forced adaptation. Soma Santoki’s character, Mahito, loses his mother in a fire. His father moves to the country and remarries Natsuko, Mahito’s sister, who is voiced by Yoshino Kimura.
A grey heron that shows up seems like a messenger of the dead, resembling a crow. That is, until Masaki Suda’s portrayal of the enchanted bird starts to play with Mahito’s mind, taking him on a disconcerting tour of the Great Beyond.
The journey explores figurative and metaphysical topics, including acceptance, mortality, and death. The handling of mature material is coloured with ambivalence, and the tone is solemn and elegiac. Even in Miyazaki’s more sombre movies, like as Princess Mononoke and The Wind Rises, there is a sense of exuberant adventure that is tinged with a melancholy fear of irreversible loss.
The Boy and the Heron isn’t always as good as Miyazaki’s earlier works, even though it is probably a fitting endeavour for the 83-year-old filmmaker. Miyazaki’s 12th film feels, in texture, like a rehash of earlier projects rather than an autumnal flowering of long-standing issues.
The intricately designed backgrounds, colour palettes, and flowing motions are reminiscent of past films such as Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Princess Mononoke. Like plumper cousins of the Kodama tree spirits from Princess Mononoke, the Warawara creatures resemble balloons. The adorable elderly women who worry about Mahito’s family are reminiscent of the grandparents from Ghibli’s past.
It takes some time for Miyazaki’s sudden storyline and setting changes to become apparent in his narrative. When Mahito starts his tour of the netherworld, Miyazaki unleashes a plethora of remarkable creations, including a young woman who can breathe fire and parakeets who converse.
Another recurring subject in the film is the inevitability of change that results in an unlikely rejuvenation of the spirit, which permeates Mahito’s coming-of-age journey. In his twelfth feature film, Miyazaki turns to known solace, confident that even a mediocre film from a master of animation will not lack charm or poignant moments.
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