Film Review: "The Boy and the Heron"
Hayao Miyazaki's newest (and potentially last) film is a lyrical, beautiful, and haunting reflection on the power of grief and our ability to work through it.
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When done well, animation has the power to take us out of ourselves, to transport us to a magical world that doesn’t follow the rules of the humdrum world in which we live. Though behemoth studios like Disney seem to be floundering in the imagination department of late–Strange World was ambitious but narratively undercooked, while Wish had all of the ingredients of a successful masterpiece but couldn’t quite figure out how to put them together–The Boy and the Heron, the new film from Hayao Miyazaki, shows that the old master still has a thing or two (or thousand) to say to the world.
The film focuses on 12-year-old Mahito. After his mother perishes in a tragic fire, he goes to live in the countryside with his father and his father’s new wife, Natsuko, who is pregnant with a baby sibling. However, things in the country aren’t at all what they seem. Not only is this country estate populated by some deliciously cartoonish grannies; there’s also a mysterious tower on the property, a sinister heron which seems to taunt Mahito with the possibility that he might be able to see his mother again. After Natsuko wanders away into the surrounding forest, Mahito follows her, only to find himself drawn into a world both perilous and beautiful.
Though Miyazaki’s unique visual and emotional stylings are evident from the beginning, it’s only once Mahito pursues Natsuko into the forest that they come out in full force, and things only become curiouser and curiouser after he finds himself pulled into a strange alternate universe. As the boy wanders through this fantastic dreamscape, he encounters all manner of bizarre creatures, from a group of predatory pelicans–one of whom is voiced by Willem Dafoe–to a sinister variety of parakeets that are as dangerously carnivorous as they are cute. There’s something wondrous and terrifying about this world, and these sequences are potent reminders of the ability of hand-drawn animation to capture both the beauty and the terror of the fantastic.
To be sure, the film can at times seem hard-to-follow, at least if your primary mode of viewing is narrative comprehensibility. However, as Alissa Wilkinson notes in The New York Times, it definitely succeeds as an “exercise in contemplation.” Indeed, the film moves from moment to moment sometimes without clear narrative intention, and as a viewer I found it best to just let go and let the film take me where it would. Therein, I think, lies the peculiar magic that is one of Miyazaki’s great gifts as a filmmaker.
Furthermore, what struck me as I watched The Boy and the Heron was how effective and evocative it was as a reflection on the nature of grief and the powerlessness one feels at the loss of a loved one. Mahito feels this particularly acutely, since one of the first scenes of the film features him racing to try to rescue his mother from the flames, only to find himself too late. When he encounters a different version of her in the alternative world in which he finds himself, it’s the fulfillment of a fantasy: who, after all, hasn’t wondered what it would be like to reconnect with someone who has been unexpectedly snatched away by death?
To take this one step further, The Boy and the Heron is also a rumination on the nature of power and agency. As the film reaches its climax, Mahito comes face-to-face with his granduncle, a powerful wizard who offers him the chance to take control of the cosmos. Power is an extraordinary thing, however, and Mahito turns away from it before an enraged being known simply as the Parakeet King (yes, the carnivorous parakeets have their own monarch) slices through the blocks the wizard uses to manipulate the world, causing the whole thing to collapse and forcing Mahito and the others, including Natsuko and Himi, to return to their respective worlds. This moment is a particularly potent one for both Mahito and this version of his mother, as each of them has to accept her inevitable demise. Some things, the film makes clear, cannot be changed, and there is accepting this brings with it its own sort of peace and beauty.
Like so many of Miyazaki’s best productions, The Boy and the Heron is a film which deftly captures the beauty, the terror, and the surrealism of dreams and of childhood. The film is filled with moments of genuine beauty and wonder, as when Warawara–which are essentially human souls that have yet to take on human bodies–float up to the skies. At the same time, such moments are often punctuated by horror and violence, as when a group of ravenous pelicans devour the Warawara, disrupting their beatific flight until they are banished, in turn, by a flame-wielding Himi. The tortured encounter between Mahito and one of the dying pelicans is one of the most wrenching in the entire film, made all the more so by the fact that he is voiced by none other than Dafoe.
However, there are also some remarkable moments of levity, as well, and even though the parakeets are obviously a danger, there is also something sublimely ridiculous about the very idea of killer parakeets that not only try to slay a boy and his companions but also have done enough work as a society to have a king. The grannies who inhabit the country house are somehow both horrifying and endearing, and they are each rendered in exquisitely individualistic detail.
At the end of the day, though, The Boy and the Heron is a heartfelt letter to the power of animated storytelling. The English dub is, in Studio Ghibli, well-done, and I was especially blown away by Robert Pattinson’s simultaneously disturbing and brilliant voicing of the Grey Heron. Mark Hamill is unsurprisingly exquisitely well-cast as the aged and mysterious Granduncle who summons Mahito to his presence. If Miyazaki never directs another film, The Boy and the Heron will serve as a fitting testament to his genius.