After releasing The Wind Rises in 2013, acclaimed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement from filmmaking. He was too old, he said. We understood, we said. Animation is hard work. It takes time. Miyazaki, who was in his 70s at the time, might not have enough to make another film. Then he went and made The Boy and the Heron. Thank God. It is a great film. It might be one of his best.
Buy The Boy and the Heron 4K UHDDrawing inspiration from his own war-torn childhood, The Boy and the Heron follows Mahito Maki as his father moves him from the city, where a recent bombing killed his mother, to his Aunt’s estate in the country. He has a difficult time adjusting. It is a strange place with strange people. He’s still mourning his mother and to complicate matters his father has married his aunt. And she’s pregnant. He’ll soon have a sibling.
A strange grey heron begins following Mahito around. Then he starts talking. In that way only Miyazaki could manage, we discover there is a man inside the bird. It is unclear if he wearing some kind of magical bird suit, or if the bird is a demon who has swallowed the man, or what. He’s called “Birdman” in the credits if you find that helpful. The heron leads Mahito to a strange tower. Inside the tower, he’ll discover a magical world.
There he will meet Kiriko, who will help him catch a giant fish which she feeds to little bubble spirits. Himi, a woman who can magically use fire, uses it to save the bubble spirits from attack pelicans. Mahito will run into man-eating parakeets. He must venture farther into this strange, new world, in order to rescue his stepmother who has been captured by the Parakeet King. He’ll also meet an old wizard who is a distant relative of Mahito. He built the tower (around a meteorite that fell years ago) and it is he who built these magical worlds and controls them. He asks Mahito to take control of this world when he dies.
In other words, this is a grand, fantastic adventure that only the mind of Hayao Miyazaki could create. It also seems deeply personal. I mean more deeply personal than MIyazaki’s usually are, and they usually are quite personal. This feels like a film made by a man looking back on his life, and wondering if it has meaning.
You could say that Mahito is like a young Miyazaki – escaping the horrors of the world into fantasy. You could then also say that the old wizard is Miyazaki today – a creator of magical worlds wondering if what he’s done has been good, looking for someone without malice to carry on his legacy. Or you could just say it is a wonderful story told brilliantly.
It is a film I want to watch again. And soon. For part of its runtime, I wasn’t sure about the film. I liked it, but it seems a little slower than his usual films. More thoughtful maybe. Definitely full of characters and incident, but I wasn’t quite connecting how it all fit together. But the longer I sit with it, the more I love it. I have a feeling it will wind up being one of my very favorites.
The animation in The Boy and the Heron is as beautiful as anything Studio Ghibli has put out. This 4K UHD disc by GKIDS looks stunning. It also comes with a standard Blu-ray disc, and numerous extras including storyboards, interviews, a music video for the theme songs, trailers, and a nifty featurette with Takeshi Honda who demonstrates his drawing skills.
