It’s the film that the revered animator and co-founder of Studio Ghibli Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement to make, and it’s arguably one of his most personal. The Boy and the Heron is a strikingly beautiful, densely detailed fantasy that revisits themes and devices familiar from previous films and ties them together with elements that have a clear autobiographical resonance for the director. The dream logic of the narrative seems to have been born from the untrammelled imagination of a child rather than that of a man in his 80s. The lush orchestral score, by regular Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi, is shimmering and exultant. All the elements are in place. So it seems almost churlish to note that this is middling Miyazaki at best.
Of course, a mid-level Miyazaki film is still a vastly superior entity to much of the more cynically commercial content served up by Hollywood animation studios. And it’s not as if the seductive spell has been entirely broken. But compared with, say, the beguiling simplicity of My Neighbour Totoro, or the richly realised world of Spirited Away, this sometimes feels heavy going. Some of that trademark Miyazaki magic has been stifled by overplotted, incoherent storytelling and an unwieldy final third act.
