Nobody does it like Miyazaki, animation or otherwise.
It has been a long ten years since Hayao Miyazaki made his supposed ‘farewell masterpiece’ The Wind Rises -and indeed as a highly personal story of life and artistry, it was a perfect film to go out on for the man just about world-renowned as the greatest filmmaker in the animation medium. And yet a few years ago, stirrings of a new project began to come out, an enigmatic film called How Do You Live? -a meditative title that evokes the moving last words of the earlier film. Under the far inferior English title The Boy and the Heron it has finally come out after about six years in production. And on some level it does indeed fit the contemplation implied by that original name.
The Boy and the Heron is, like The Wind Rises, a mature film -one that could only be made late in its filmmakers career. This is in spite of it returning to the very visceral imaginative fantasy that characterizes his best-known masterpieces, and a sense of whimsy that permeates even through more serious developments. It is a movie about grief and growing up, about the burden of inheritance, about virtue and about death, and it is immensely potent and beautiful in all of these respects.
Drawing from some of Miyazaki’s personal childhood experiences, it is primarily the story of a boy, Mahito Maki, growing up during the Second World War, whose mother tragically dies in a hospital fire over which Mahito develops a guilt complex. His father, an air munitions producer, shortly thereafter marries her sister Natsuko and evacuates the family from Tokyo to the countryside, where Mahito struggles to adapt to his ‘new mother’, and is frequently drawn to a mysterious tower nearby, supposedly build by his great-granduncle, as well as a somewhat aggressive grey heron that eventually begins talking to and taunting him. One day Natsuko disappears wandering near the tower and Mahito sets out to find her, a journey that takes him and the Heron into a slew of strange magical new worlds.
The particulars of Miyazaki’s craft have not diminished an inch in all this time away -the hallmarks are all still there. That very singular expressiveness to his characters, distinct from most other anime, his sense of patience to the pacing -letting particularly evocative moments simply dwell, and yet a vibrant energy and colour that enriches highly detailed environments; attention to the little nuances of human behaviour, food that looks heavenly, and of course that graceful attitude towards flight -illustrated here through multiple types of birds playing a significant role. And Miyazaki has studied those birds closely, capturing both an elegance and ugliness that is likewise natural and corresponding to the way the avians function in his story.
Just on the whole there’s more creeping unsettling imagery in this film than is typical for Miyazaki -like the man poking out from under the beak of the Heron -bulbous nose and big grinning teeth, a melting woman, a graphic impression of a dying pelican -all things that set you in a state of unease. None more so than one burst of violence early on unlike anything since Princess Mononoke -where Mahito clubs himself in the head with a rock. It leaves him with a scar, a symbol we later find, and it signals a grim intonation that hangs over the movie, through its whimsical moments as well as the dramatic. Mahito’s journey is not entirely a thrilling adventure, it has the shape of a Divine Comedy or Pilgrim’s Progress. It is a spiritual endeavour as much as a rescue mission, as Mahito is ultimately made to confront his own antipathy towards life in the aftermath of his mother’s death. In a way he is even reckoning with a kind of death himself.
The Boy and the Heron spends a lot of time in the assorted dimensions of Miyazaki’s conception of an underworld, which begins in somewhat familiar River Styx territory, but evolves into an entirely unique and captivating world that in fascinating aspects mirrors Mahito’s own (especially that stone tower). There are the warawara, little cute bubble creatures –vessels for unborn souls- safeguarded by Kiriko, a young analogue to one of the old grannies who assists Natsuko at her home. And there is a civilization of giant man-eating parakeets who act as guardians of the tower and its various portals. As much as a threat, these wind up a source of some very effective comic relief –indeed for some of the heaviness to this film, it is unexpectedly one of Miyazaki’s funniest, delivering comic beats or visual gags with an almost Looney Tunes-like finesse.
And such a comparison speaks well to Miyazaki’s traditionalism of style and substance. It’s as though the film exists in its own nexus unencumbered by the world and the industry outside –or maybe I’ve just seen so few animated movies in recent years without a ton of modern references and touchstones. But the film’s contexts are explicitly fantastical, its language free of affect -even in the dub, and its animation proudly pristinely classical. Even where digital effects are clearly in use, the personalized craft can still be felt in every frame, every movement. Of course in that practical style and artistic creativity, Miyazaki is at the height of his powers. The animation is fluid and thrilling, bright and poetic. In the atmospheric environments there is the very same flare that can be felt as far back as Nausicaa or Castle in the Sky -relatively little that could date this movie. And the score by the ever-impressive Joe Hisaishi is striking and gravitational -possibly even one of his best.
It suits the weight of the story and the true meaning of Mahito’s quest -not just to save and accept his new mother, but to find greater understanding of his loss and purpose in his difficult world. In the last act, Mahito’s great-granduncle, who apparently lost himself in the underworld, plays a vital part in guiding Mahito’s resolution. It recalls the phrase of the film’s original title, ‘how do you live?’, as Mahito is posed with essentially that conundrum, and his revelation is beautiful -life-affirming amidst such pronounced connotations of death. There’s a curious note too in his adventure being a kind of passage towards maturity -certainly it has its fill of both childish wonder and grimness, and a deliberate sense of the ugliness that exists in the world alongside the beautiful. It’s a kind of dreamy metaphor for growing up that crucially features allusions to death, as though confronting a certain loss of innocence is necessary -one could argue it absolutely is for a kid in Japan in the 1940s: Mahito as well as Miyazaki himself. But in this there is also healing -I particularly love how through his companion Lady Hima, the flames that traumatized him in memory of his mother come to represent something new and powerful about her. The fate of this world itself seems to tie into this interpretation as well -and there’s the hint he won’t remember any of it as he grows up.
But this facet makes the movie all the more interesting. It is a remarkable work, and if it happens to be Miyazaki’s last, it is a fine one to go out on -if perhaps not as perfect in this regard as The Wind Rises. But it too deals deftly in themes of finality. The Boy and the Heron has quite a good English voice cast, including Gemma Chan, Christian Bale, Karen Fukuhara, Dave Bautista, and Florence Pugh. Mark Hamill (on his third Miyazaki dub) as the Granduncle is a notable stand-out though, as is the most baffling casting choice, Robert Pattinson, as the Heron -an unrecognisable performance in which he concocts two distinct yet linked voices for both the sinister-seeming Heron and the less intimidating comic relief ‘Heron-Man’. They bring life to the story as much if not more than in the Japanese; although in either case the film remains astonishing. A fitting, exciting return for Hayao Miyazaki, still the titan of his form!
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