Worth: $15.50
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Cast:
Christian Bale, Gemma Chan, Dave Bautista, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill, Florence Pugh, Robert Pattinson [voice, dubbed version]
Intro:
… has the emotional nuance, velvety animation, and joyously fruity world-building that makes Ghibli a force to be reckoned with even after all these years (along with another stellar English dub), all in service to a story about finding peace in the end of things.
In 2013, druidic animator Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli, released The Wind Rises, at the time touted as his final film before retiring. A proto-Oppenheimer biopic about human invention and the destruction that can result from it, it was quite the fitting closer for a visionary with such a combative relationship with his own industry (asking Miyazaki about animation can be like asking Alan Moore about comic books). However, much like all the other times that he claimed he was officially retiring, he has since followed that up with more work, both in the 2018 short film Boro the Caterpillar, and now with this new feature.
Those looking to get lost in another one of Miyazaki’s vast and peculiarly detailed fantasy worlds will absolutely get their fix here. Those who have regular nightmares about swooping magpie attacks might struggle a bit, though, as this is a very bird-heavy dreamscape. This is a place full of desperate pelicans, militaristic parakeets, and the grotesque Heron.
And then there’s the titular Boy, Mahito, whose Narnian immersion into this beautiful and casually unsettling land is underpinned by familiar Miyazaki themes (harmony with nature, finding the path of least aggression, looking past binary understanding of morality, etc.).
However, while its Pacific War-set prelude sets the foundation for the rather sobering mood of the film overall, that also comes as a result of this following in the footsteps of The Wind Rises and serving as its own denouement for Miyazaki’s filmic body of work.
To that end, Mahito and his coming-of-age trajectory into his own person comes to represent Miyazaki as a child, while the Prospero-esque Granduncle, the caretaker of the fantasy world in-universe, serves as the stand-in for Miyazaki the artist. The grand creator is in desperate search for his successor, for someone who can maintain the creation and keep the dream alive… or perhaps just free himself from it. The notion of passing the torch to a new generation is treated with a certain icy defeatism (mirroring real-world anxieties within Studio Ghibli regarding its own future, accepting endings as a part of the natural order rather than trying to will an ellipsis into being. Needing to leave the world of dreams and return to reality is nothing new for a Ghibli feature, but here, it feels like a genuine departure and a bittersweet one at that.
Only time will tell if this is indeed for real this time super-duper-seriously no-take-backsies the final Hayao Miyazaki movie, but The Boy and The Heron carries itself with a sombre yet accepting finality. It has the emotional nuance, velvety animation, and joyously fruity world-building that makes Ghibli a force to be reckoned with even after all these years (along with another stellar English dub), all in service to a story about finding peace in the end of things. It can hurt to think about saying goodbye, in any of the contexts presented by this film, but it leaves with the assurance that it can and must be done.
