The work of Hayao Miyazaki with Studio Ghibli has never affected me in the way it has many others of my generation. For one, I never wholly vibed with anime otaku culture, and whenever I did get around to enjoying that particular kind of media, I always preferred reading the manga over watching their animated adaptations—I find the voice acting annoying, for the most part, whether sub or dub, and not even a studio like MAPPA can out-animate one’s imagination—and the culture itself did not feel like a natural home for me, what with all its quirks and gate-keeping. (This is, to be fair, not unique to otaku culture, but still.)
Miyazaki, however, is often viewed as an exemplar of how Japanese popular art can transcend its niche appeal. His films tend to be critical darlings and have even been given rather favorable ranking in lists such as Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time. I’ve personally met more than a few people who adore his Ghibli productions but have only, at best, a marginal interest in anime as a whole. Like the work of Satoshi Kon and perhaps Makoto Shinkai, it’s pop anime for art lovers, for cinephiles, not just for nerds who gush over fan edits and cosplay as the hottest character from the hottest new show at A-Kon. (No hate, though: I enjoy stuff like Bleach and One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen as much as the next guy…)
And I also suppose that an early introduction to Miyazaki goes a long way. After all, they are primarily children’s films, and often prioritize a soft, “kawaii” aesthetic for this reason. But unfortunately, I never caught the bug: I saw Howl’s Moving Castle when it was first released in American theaters but it failed to stick in my memory beyond a few pleasing frames. I didn’t watch another Ghibli film until over a decade later, in college, and I was similarly unimpressed by his Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Ditto for Castle in the Sky (very pretty, though) and Kiki’s Delivery Service (see previous parenthetical). They were all a little too precious for my taste, both in mindset and overall feel, although of course one cannot discount the gorgeous animation, and each probably had a moment or two that can be viewed as a sterling utilization of the medium’s unique capabilities.
“But wait,” you cry. “You can’t write off Miyazaki without having seen Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke or My Neighbor Totoro or…!” And so on. To which I reply: correct, which is why I’m decidedly not doing so, and am only detailing my previous familiarity (and disappointment) with Miyazaki + Studio Ghibli in order to diverge and, in fact, commend their latest installment, 2023’s The Boy and the Heron.
I went in expecting something very well-drawn, well-animated, and well-scored (by the ever-reliable Joe Hisaishi), and even at times touching, but ultimately too simplistic for viewers desirous of more substantive material. But I was caught off guard by the opening scene, with the young protagonist Mahito waking up in the night to see the Tokyo hospital his mother, Hisako, works at set aflame. We quickly understand that we are in World War II Japan. The scene of Mahito running through the frenzied streets, with the citizens appearing as wraiths of panicked smoke, is quite compelling and a signal to the viewer that the tone of this film will not be so winsome as one may normally associate with Miyazaki’s oeuvre.
This short opening sequence may remind one of stories like The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (I’m thinking of the 2005 film adaptation, specifically, and its opening with the Pevensies in the Blitz) or even Pan’s Labyrinth. A year after his mother’s death, Mahito and his father, Shoichi, a factory manager who builds planes for the military, relocate to the countryside. They are to live in the sprawling manor of Hisako’s beautiful younger sister, Natsuko, who also happens to be pregnant with Shoichi’s child.
Mahito, headstrong and unusually stern for his age, is cold to Natsuko’s attempts to familiarize herself to him. He carries himself like an infantryman and, immediately the outsider, gets into a scuffle at his new school, even stoically wounding himself in the head with a rock afterwards, out of shame, or to avoid returning, or perhaps to test himself. But in contrast to the boy’s premature sternness is the utter loveliness of the country home, which possesses buildings of both traditional Japanese and Western design. Natsuko’s servants (a group of homely seniors, mostly women) tend to the estate and also provide light comic relief with their bickering.
Mahito eventually finds a ruined tower, crumbling and overgrown with vegetation, in the nearby forest. It is said that Natsuko’s eccentric grand-uncle built the tower, only to retreat into its confines and mysteriously vanish.
But most notable of all is the grey heron that lives on the estate. It immediately seems to target Mahito (who sees it unnaturally squeeze itself into the old tower), and soon enough its behavior gets even stranger: it mimics the voice of Mahito’s dead mother, taunting him in a moment of weakness, and then, when Mahito confronts it, begins to speak with a voice of its own. It further taunts the boy, and cryptically informs him that his “presence is requested” before flying away.
To his credit, Mahito takes this odd sequence of events somewhat in stride, and when Natsuko, suddenly overcome by fever, disappears into the forest, Mahito understands that he must venture into the tower in order to not only rescue her but discover what exactly is being requested of him.
What follows is more along the lines of what you’d expect from Miyazaki + Studio Ghibli: a journey into the fantastical, chock-full of creature designs both eerie (gigantic bipedal parrots who dine on human flesh) and endearing (plushy-looking entities called warawara who spiral upwards into the sky in order to become souls), when Mahito and a hapless servant are transported into the world of the tower, a separate dimension which surreally mirrors our world in the same way that dreams do our waking lives.
Just to get it out of the way: this is a beautifully animated film, and the over-six-year-long effort by the artists (much of it hand-drawn) at Studio Ghibli is plain to see. Both the scenery of Natsuko’s rural estate and the surreal imagery of the world of the tower are painstakingly illustrated, and Hisaishi’s score, at turns delicately spare and stirringly lush, lends aural beauty to the visuals.
As for the overall quality of The Boy and the Heron, it ought to be clear to the viewer that one is witnessing a coming-of-age tale, and one particularly about overcoming loss. Mahito is haunted by his mother’s death, and cannot come to grips with his failure to save her. Natsuko, at first an insufficient surrogate, becomes the trial he must surmount in order to move on and mature. But since the narrative is also set during World War II, other subtleties arise. For instance, Shoichi’s optimism, and his admiration of the tools he creates for the military, are overshadowed by the empire’s eventual defeat. There is not only a doom-tinged nostalgia for bygone eras in Japan, but also for the West, as represented by the pastoral European settings in both Natsuko’s estate and the dream-world (such settings being a longtime fascination for Miyazaki). Moreover, it would not be unwise to read a similar ill-fated nostalgia into the character of the tower’s master (the Prospero parallels are evident, but perhaps a Miyazaki stand-in, as well?), who has built his world out of such elements as can be found in dreams, as wondrous as they are insubstantial.
Do I claim The Boy and the Heron to be a great masterpiece? Far from it, as I do agree with some reviewers that the film loses much of its focus and mature(er) intrigue once Mahito gets transported to the dream-world (I lament, for instance, certain side-plots like the attempt to explain away the tower’s outlandish capabilities; it only subtracted from the film’s dream-like appeal), and it is, at the end of the day, a children’s film that prioritizes flights of fancy and simplistic characterizations over anything deeper. But it is a good-solid children’s film, by an artist who respects young people’s sensitivity to beauty, nuance, and even to more subdued emotional registers; and there is plenty of humor to go around, especially as exhibited by the rascally grey heron (Robert Pattinson’s performance as this character in the English dub is downright chameleonic, and a ton of fun).
I’ve used the word “dream” more than a few times in the course of this review. I use it for a reason, since it is something Miyazaki consciously plays with throughout the film. In the beginning half, it is uncertain whether the events Mahito witnesses are real or not, since many of them occur right after he awakes from sleep: is the talking heron a figment of his dreaming imagination? Are any of the events, for that matter, ones that we must totally assume are happening in “real life”? In the very end, Miyazaki closes with a blunt matter-of-factness that belies the fantastical nature of the tale—did any of it “really” happen as shown, or did Mahito simply grow up in the interval between his arrival to the countryside and the family’s return to Tokyo, between one life and the next? What, then, is “real” and what is “dream?”
When so much of what it is to be a child is to live in one’s imagination, how much do such distinctions truly matter?
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More from Ezekiel Yu: Limit & Mist: On Béla Tarr’s “Werckmeister Harmonies” (2000), Creation, Here and Now: on Henry Beston’s “The Outermost House” (1928), The Brutal Record: On Joe Carnahan’s “Narc” (2002)