The best magic is the kind that’s impossible to work out. The stuff that leaves you scratching your head, jaw dangling open, eyes oscillating with amazement. If it’s hand-drawn by a team of 60 Studio Ghibli artists (at a painstaking pace of one minute of footage a month, FYI), the more the magical. And when the director is Hayao Miyazaki, aka probably the greatest animator of all time, we’re laughing all the way to a world of wonder. Although, curb your anticipation, slight caveat to come.
It's wartime Tokyo and bombing raids have set the city aflame, one conflagration claiming the life of Mahito’s hospitalised mother. Perhaps his father’s idea of moving to the countryside to live with Mahito’s new “mother” (the pregnant sister of the one who died) isn’t the most sensitive way to cure a young boy’s bereavement. No worries Mahito, because lookie over there! A mischievous anthropomorphic heron beckoning you to a (rather handily placed) mysterious abandoned tower.
Surely there’s an adventure as mad as an army of talking parakeets (pelicans and tiny bubbly-wubbly critters called warawara that will charm fans also feature) to be had. An escapade (and here’s a key meaning) that might help Mahito reconcile the death of his mother and his acceptance of her sister. Off he goes, à la Ghibli, inexorably drawn by a cavalcade of endearingly odd creatures.
There are more “other worlds” – and an excess of symbolism that many viewers might find baffling – in this than previous films by the studio. And the ploy of plunging through portal after portal (I counted at least seven) into endless realms does not necessarily an interesting story make.
That said, this still walks, soars and gambols all over the competition. There’s no one quite as wondrous as Miyazaki. And we are lucky to have this, seeing as he apparently retired 10 years ago. This is now his latest “last” film, so who knows what the future holds. There are some lovely biographical touches too: as a child Miyazaki was relocated from Tokyo during the Second World War, and like Mahito’s father, his directed a company manufacturing fighter plane parts.
'There’s no one quite as wondrous as Miyazaki. And we are lucky to have this, seeing as he apparently retired 10 years ago'
So how does this compare to the director's masterpieces My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away? The animation doesn’t quite match up to the extraordinary swirling glory of those. After all, according to the BFI Sight & Sound annual poll, they are the 72nd and 75th best films of all time respectively. The Boy and the Heron might, say, rank as the 536th greatest movie ever, which in the grand scheme of things is none too shabby.
And for a tale about a boy whose mother has just tragically died, grief has never been so much fun.
