The great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki recently cancelled the retirement he had announced back in 2013 and wrote and directed this new feature film. In movie terms, it’s the equivalent of Prospero supergluing his staff back together and carrying on regardless. Does the magic still work?
Well, I found The Boy and the Heron a mysterious and charming fantasy that circles back to Miyazaki’s classic themes of childhood pain and grief and how these were forged in the fires of the second world war. It also brings home an authorial point that deserves wider discussion: Miyazaki has been influenced by classic English children’s literature. At various times, this reminds me of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and CS Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The film’s original title How Do You Live? is however taken from a 1937 Japanese novel (what might now be called YA) by Genzaburō Yoshino, referenced in the film’s action, and a favourite of Miyazaki’s.
