The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)

Angry birds

Both a pain and a pleasure to write about a new Hayao Miyazaki film-- a pleasure because for some three years after the man's previous last film it looked as if he had really retired and for seven years after looked as if he'd never finish the film before, well, you know. But finish he did, and now pain comes from the possibility this may really be his last-- he's 82, the picture certainly feels like a summation, and as high points go this as good as any to bow out on. 

The Japanese title Kimitachi wa Do Ikiru ka (How Do You Live?) is from Genzaburo Yoshino's 1937 novel of which little of the actual story is used, but answering the eponymous question (posed to the book's protagonist and its readers) seems to be the driving force behind two of the film's central characters, even posed to 12-year-old Mahito early in the film as the title to a book found with his mother's handwriting in one page.

Yoshino's book may well be unfilmable-- the socialist writer's response to the imperialistic regime's request for an ethics textbook for children. The writer opted against a straight sermon, deciding instead on a format of questions asked by a young boy, answered in a series of philosophical essays by his uncle-- a children's classic on paper, a potentially inert animated feature on the big screen. 

Instead Miyazaki opts to refashion circumstances to more closely fit his own boyhood, proceeds to answer the youth's unasked questions with vignettes reimagined or reworked from his previous films. Hence Mahito (voice of Soma Santoki, Luca Padovan in the English dub) has an absent mother (like the hospital-bound mother in My Neighbor Totoro-- which in turn is modeled after Miyazaki's own), stands against a background of aircraft manufacture (The Wind Rises, Porco Rosso, Miyazaki's own family), must deal with forest spirits (Princess Mononoke), seeks to restore a missing parent (Spirited Away). He encounters the Heron (voice of Masaki Suda, Robert Pattinson in the English)-- actually a short grotesque with ambivalent manners by turns rough, treacherous, ultimately supportive (see Yubaba/Zeniba in Spirited Away); encounters the brash pirate Kiriko (Ko Shibasaki, Florence Pugh in the English), an intriguing mix of tomboy and motherly care who echoes Mama Dola in Laputa, Castle in the Sky-- also modeled if one remembers after Miyazaki's mother). 

The Boy and the Heron has the look and feel of a classic European fairy tale, arguably Miyazaki's favorite storytelling form, adopting the matter-of-fact tone of The Brothers Grimm and melancholic romanticism of Hans Christian Andersen (the title could easy belong in one of Andersen's story anthologies)-- and definitely not in the Disney manner. There are touches of horror here including an abattoir with hunks of raw unbeeflike meat on stained chopping blocks next to large cleavers, and disturbingly human ribs curving right behind. There's bizarre humor involving an army of parakeets led by a cute if intimidatingly tall Parakeet King (Jun Kunimura, Dave Bautista in the English)-- the budgies sport disarmingly colorful feathery fuzz but brandish sharp blades, and often talk of having Mahito as snack or stew. And there's a spark of dreamlike fabulism straight out of Charles Dogdson, from the frogs that threaten to cover Mahito to the sleeping princess that melts away upon touch to the rose that drifts down to shatter against the flagstones to the swaying stack of blocks that insists on standing despite a swiped piece or two. Dodgson also helps inform the tone of the otherworldly creatures' voices when they address Mahito-- callous, even hostile, with a cavalier attitude to the most fantastic of developments. When the warawara-- basically marshmallow puffs with pencil dot eyes and a permanent smile-- start to rise to the air, Kiriko immediately informs Mahito that they're ready to assume human form (implied: they're unborn souls). Mahito, this being his first visit, is often a step behind, but takes everything in stride and responds quickly, even resourcefully (he fashions a bow and arrow from bamboo to which he attaches the heron's feather for fletching-- a touch that lends the arrow unexpected powers). 

But all the twists and turns and inexplicable imagery are in the service of a remarkably coherent emotional journey. Mahito has lost his mother, is unsure of his feelings to his father and new stepmother (in classic fairy tales the villainess of choice). He copes with wary eyes and willing attitude, applying to each request or challenge a curt nod of the head and even more determined shoulder to the grindstone (or wooden door, or barred gold gate, or whatever's in his way). He reminds me of Pazu from Laputa, relentlessly determined and endlessly inventive, his flyer's goggles hiding a sense of hurt abandonment. If Mahito is reportedly meant to represent both the filmmaker in his boyhood and the young man he hopes his grandson will grow up to be, he couldn't have picked a better representative, or role model, or inspiration. 

Along the way boy and film pause to confront one or two images of mortality, from the old pelican (voice of Kauru Kobayashi, Willem Dafoe-- could they have made a more appropriate choice?-- in the English) unflinchingly leaning against an outhouse to Mahito's Granduncle (Shohei Hino, Mark Hamill in the English) brooding over his hidden kingdom and its eventual fate (Skip the rest of this paragraph if you haven't seen the film). The Granduncle's musings to Mahito may represent Miyazaki's musings to his grandson over his legacy: a realm of fantasy and inexplicable forces, with startlingly relatable creatures (brusque and often hungry) and constantly changing dynamics (hence the constantly tottering tower of blocks). Granduncle asks Mahito to take over and when the boy refuses, nods his understanding: the boy must make his own way, build his own realm fantastical or not. He does grant (or Mahito steals, or accidentally pockets) a block for the boy to take away-- a seed if you like for his realm to possibly continue.

An overwhelming experience-- can't say much more than that. Miyazaki at the seeming top of his form, fusing the epic imagery of Nausicaa and Laputa with the surrealism of Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle and Ponyo, in the service of a self-reflecting self-judging narrative a la The Wind Rises. It's like Matisse in his last decade, forsaking subtlety and detail to work in pure solid colors cut from paper. Miyazaki seems to telling his grandson-- and us: "there's little time left, and I must say this before I go" and then says it. Presumably he's ready to go.