Purported to be the master Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s last movie, maybe, The Boy and the Heron is a gentler and slower though no less soulful addition to his canon. The film, about a young boy slipping like so many Miyazaki protagonists to a world unencumbered by mortality, takes its time to get going. Meanwhile, it’s preoccupied with those who have no time left.
It’s a fittingly solemn swan song for the 82-year-old film-maker who – with films like My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away – has taken us to magical worlds where human and animal anatomies are free to make exchanges while industry and nature become harmonious in ungodly ways. The catbus in Totoro always struck me as a cuddly response to a Cronenberg monster.
