While lacking the broad commercial appeal of previous Studio Ghibli classics Castle in the Sky or My Neighbor Totoro, Hayao Miyazaki continues to mature his craft in The Boy and the Heron, a surreal odyssey that soul searches through Miyazaki's personal childhood experiences as a fever dream.
Mahito Maki loses his mother Hisako to a hospital fire in Tokyo during World War II. Mahito's father Shoichi moves them back to their family estate in the rural countryside and marries his mother's younger sister, Natsuko.
Struggling to adapt to his new home and school life, Mahito meets a mysterious heron that leads him to an abandoned tower built by Natsuko's architect granduncle, luring him with the opportunity to reunite with his mother. When Natsuko disappears, Mahito follows the heron into the tower to rescue her...
The Boy and the Heron is best enjoyed for its surrealism, visualizing grief and trauma as dream symbols. Hayao Miyazaki draws the fantastical creatures from a deeply personal place, conjuring his own Jungian and Freudian archetypes, and mixing folklore, and Eastern and Western views of the afterlife.
For example, the heron resembles a stork, normally the trusty deliverer of babies in popular folklore, but is now subverted into a monstrous trickster with occasional body horror moments.
It's up to the audience to interpret the meaning behind the dream motifs and extrapolate what Miyazaki is attempting to say, like learning the context behind a painter's life before judging a self-portrait.
The pacing picks up once Mahito crosses into the fantasy world where there's lots of location-hopping with numerous characters. It's trippy and a bit too much to take in all at once, but it was fun to be lost in all of it.
Studio Ghibli's animation is gorgeous and lifelike, patiently pulling the viewer into its reality step by step. Miyazaki is a master at capturing the eccentricities of human movement, especially the subtle ways people sway and shift their weight.
Do the Studio Ghibli animators ever get self-conscious walking around the office, knowing that the boss is observing their little movements?
The film's original Japanese title translates to "How Do You Live?" A more fitting English translation of the film's message would be "How Do You Live On?" .
The film explores grief head-on without any cartoon cuteness. The Mahito Maki character is realistically presented as a quiet boy who's haunted by the memory of his mother dying, visualized as a nightmarish inferno. Mahito's determination to face his demons alone was unexpectedly moving.
The Wind Rises, Miyazaki's previous feature that was also an autobiographical soul searching piece, could be viewed as a thematic companion piece. The Boy and the Heron is the superior work; it's imaginative and magical and likely will be more memorable over time.
Mahito Maki loses his mother Hisako to a hospital fire in Tokyo during World War II. Mahito's father Shoichi moves them back to their family estate in the rural countryside and marries his mother's younger sister, Natsuko.
Struggling to adapt to his new home and school life, Mahito meets a mysterious heron that leads him to an abandoned tower built by Natsuko's architect granduncle, luring him with the opportunity to reunite with his mother. When Natsuko disappears, Mahito follows the heron into the tower to rescue her...
The Boy and the Heron is best enjoyed for its surrealism, visualizing grief and trauma as dream symbols. Hayao Miyazaki draws the fantastical creatures from a deeply personal place, conjuring his own Jungian and Freudian archetypes, and mixing folklore, and Eastern and Western views of the afterlife.
For example, the heron resembles a stork, normally the trusty deliverer of babies in popular folklore, but is now subverted into a monstrous trickster with occasional body horror moments.
It's up to the audience to interpret the meaning behind the dream motifs and extrapolate what Miyazaki is attempting to say, like learning the context behind a painter's life before judging a self-portrait.
The pacing picks up once Mahito crosses into the fantasy world where there's lots of location-hopping with numerous characters. It's trippy and a bit too much to take in all at once, but it was fun to be lost in all of it.
Studio Ghibli's animation is gorgeous and lifelike, patiently pulling the viewer into its reality step by step. Miyazaki is a master at capturing the eccentricities of human movement, especially the subtle ways people sway and shift their weight.
Do the Studio Ghibli animators ever get self-conscious walking around the office, knowing that the boss is observing their little movements?
The film's original Japanese title translates to "How Do You Live?" A more fitting English translation of the film's message would be "How Do You Live On?" .
The film explores grief head-on without any cartoon cuteness. The Mahito Maki character is realistically presented as a quiet boy who's haunted by the memory of his mother dying, visualized as a nightmarish inferno. Mahito's determination to face his demons alone was unexpectedly moving.
The Wind Rises, Miyazaki's previous feature that was also an autobiographical soul searching piece, could be viewed as a thematic companion piece. The Boy and the Heron is the superior work; it's imaginative and magical and likely will be more memorable over time.