Celebrated Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement to deliver this Alice in Wonderland-esque fantasy about a young boy coming to terms with his mother’s death during the second world war, illuminating his grief with dazzlingly surreal visuals that are a joy to behold.
Twelve-year-old Mahito (voiced by Soma Santoki) is struggling to fit in after moving to the countryside with his father. When he follows a talking grey heron into an enchanted tower, he’s plunged into a bizarre parallel universe. It turns out his mother might be alive after all, so off he goes in search of her, encountering freakishly giant parakeets, adorable marshmallow spirits and a girl named Himi, who has the power to manipulate fire, along the way.
The Boy and the Heron was partly inspired by Miyazaki’s own childhood experience of wartime evacuation and plays like a homage to the 82-year-old film-maker’s impressive body of work with subtle references to Studio Ghibli classics like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Grave of the Fireflies. It also revisits topics that have obsessed the director throughout his long career including absent mother figures, the horrors of war, mortality and the afterlife, exploring these familiar themes with sensitivity and profound empathy.
Ten years ago, Miyazaki proclaimed that the Oscar-nominated The Wind Rises would be his last film. He ended up changing his mind and went on to make The Boy and the Heron, which again was rumoured to be his swan song. But it seems the director has reneged once more on his retirement plans and is already thinking about his next project.
Even though he seems to have difficulty letting go himself, Miyazaki’s latest animation has the solemn air of an artist looking back and pondering his own legacy. It’s a film that is very much about adjusting to loss and reaching a place of acceptance; Mahito becomes determined to find his new stepmother (who, weirdly, is also his aunt, his mother’s sister) after she is sucked into the mysterious underworld. In The Boy and the Heron, loss contains the tiny seeds of beginnings; we must move on, patch up the remnants of our crushed hearts and venture forth into our brave new world.
It might not count as one of Miyazaki’s best films, but this intimate coming-of-age is a whimsical delight, overflowing with all the wonder, imagination and verve that we have come to expect from the auteur. And while it may not be time yet to say goodbye to his gorgeously realised flights of fancy, that can only be a good thing – The Boy and the Heron shows there’s still potent magic in Miyazaki’s cinematic wizardry. Let’s just hope we won’t have to wait another 10 years.
