~ Review ~
A glorious celebration of Miyazaki, as well as his most personal film, which is a treat for the senses although it may not entirely make sense.
"Mahito... meaning sincere one. No wonder you reek of death."
2023
Japan Fantasy/Animation
Produced by Studio Ghibli Written and Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
A poster of the heron, drawn by Hayao Miyazaki himself, was the only marketing in Japan for the director's first film in a decade. It may be an indicator of his iconic status - especially following his (third) retirement announcement in 2013. It may be a course correction after his previous film (The Wind Rises) revealed too much before its release. It may also be a warning, that this wild and surprising ride is best enjoyed without any preconceptions, that it may be preferable to buy the ticket for yourself before knowing anything more.
It is hard to separate The Boy and the Heron from the legacy of the 82-year-old Studio Ghibli co-founder. It is a film that draws heavily on Miyazaki's early life in post-war Japan and a film that echoes many of his previous films in structure and theme. It also is a film (apparently the most expensive Japanese film ever produced) financed by deals that brought the near-complete Ghibli back catalogue to streaming services - and to an even larger audience.
But for all its allusions to the director's past films, The Boy and the Heron opens with Miyazaki's most harrowing sequence yet. Twelve-year old Mahito wakes in the night to sounds of alarm, ash falling from the sky. From the balcony, he witnesses a fiery inferno in the blacked-out city below. "Your mother's hospital is on fire!" As Mahito runs through the streets, the flames and the chaos overrun the scene, tearing at and melting the image of the panicked child, desperate and helpless. Miyazaki's voiceover: "Three years into the war, my mother died."
After this brutal introduction, we join Mahito as he and his father arrive in the countryside. The boy is handed over to Natsuko, his departed mother's younger sister, who cheerfully imposes herself upon him as his "new mother". Once delivered to his ancestral family home, a grey heron – the 'white rabbit' of this first act – begins harassing Mahito, insisting on drawing the boy into a fantasy world. It recalls the intrusive magic of Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro, both of which also feature parents under threat.
Mahito's reaction to the heron is at odds with our own curiosity: he draws a wooden sword and goes out to attack the bird, revealing himself as far less innocent, and less likeable, than Miyazaki's other child protagonists. He is quick to use violence and cast suspicion, and is stubborn in his resolve. Whatever Mahito's own interpretation of this (which indeed he must later confront), we are in no doubt from the opening scene that he is a victim of trauma.
The consequences of trauma play out at his new home, on his first day at a new school and in a sudden, heart-wrenching moment of self-harm. Despite verging on misanthropy, Mahito is loyal. Despite his grief and his apparent discomfort and numbness, he responds immediately when Natsuko is kidnapped by the heron - finally crossing into the other realm at the site of his grand-uncle's mysterious, decaying tower. His quest is to rescue Natsuko. Whilst the heron promises that his real mother is still alive, Mahito insists this is a lie. However much hope there may be for his mother's return, this is certainly a film geared towards Mahito's acceptance of loss and his decision to move forward.
The quest is as imaginative and colourful as we might expect: from cute, tiny, floating puffballs to shadowy wraiths. The humour and animation is consistently some of the most impressive of any Ghibli film to date, especially because so many of the fantasy denizens are birds: pelicans who cannot escape an island upon which they are doomed to feed on new souls and be persecuted for it; parakeets with a militaristic hierarchy and a taste for human flesh; and of course, the grey heron himself.
The master of the tower, the keeper of the fantasy world, Mahito's grand-uncle, is a wizard of a bygone era keeping fantasy worlds from crumbling. It is easy to read this character as an analogue of Miyazaki, legendary keeper of some of the most iconic fantasies in animated film. To do so is to wonder how the director feels about continuing to work after such a long career. Is the master of the tower foolish to cling on to the potential of a perfect world? Would the relinquishing of control be a kind of liberation?
Like the tower master, the film is especially keen on its fantastical elements, and there is a lot to love in this. However, it is somewhat to the detriment of the wider story. The grey heron character, for example, despite being constantly entertaining is ultimately difficult to read. Critic Nick Bradshaw sums it up neatly: "strangeness is foregrounded, motive and meaning trail behind." The parts of the story that are more grounded in reality do indeed trail behind. It can be hard to follow Mahito's life story: should he really accept Natsuko as his "new mother"? His father is either absent or comically reactive - he lacks depth, without which it can be difficult to find investment in Mahito's 'real' life. The overall narrative arc loses some of its clarity and conviction and the resolution can feel a little confusing: as some characters are freed, others lament.
But perhaps this reflects Miyazaki's own scruples with so-called reality. The director sealed himself away to work on The Boy and the Heron. Ghibli co-founder and president Suzuki Toshio supported him through this process:
"[Miyazaki wanted] to tell his own story in a way that he'd never done before. He also told me that with many of his past works, the protagonists are girls. And it's easy for his to write stories about female characters because he is not female - so there is a mysteriousness that comes with the protagonist. Whereas a male protagonist, because Miyazaki is also a male, it makes it harder for him. The only way he could do it is to make it autobiographical. So in writing a story about a boy - and it's essentially about himself - not everything that you tell can be all bright and good. You have to show the darker side of yourself too."
In his original proposal for the film, Miyazaki reflects on the state of the world: "When will an unpredictable major rupture occur?" and says of his project, "What has to be drawn is the courage to endure a world full of evil feelings, nightmares and blood."
Like the master of the tower, Miyazaki is reluctant to let go of the peaceful fantasy. But like Mahito, he knows he must confront the horrors of the world. In his seclusion, writing the film, Mayazaki sought to forget his past films. Suzuki claims that he was successful, and that similarity to his previous work is a natural consequence of the director reaching inside himself. Miyazaki: "I do my best in a radius of five metres around me, for I feel ever more certain that what I discover there is real. It is better to make three children happy than to make a film for five million. It may not be good business but to me this seems to be the real truth."
