‘The Boy and the Heron’: Hayao Miyazaki takes you on a dream - review

Hayao Miyazaki is considered one of the greatest animated film directors of all time, and although he claimed 11 years ago that The Wind Rises would be his last film, he has just released a new one, The Boy and the Heron, which opened in theaters throughout the country on February 1. 

His movies, among them Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle, tend to deal with young protagonists unexpectedly faced with a hero’s quest that draws them into fantastic worlds. While they often feature sweet moments and gentle creatures, they can be scary and nightmarish. Although they are animated, I wouldn’t take young children to see them. Older children, 10 and up, might enjoy them, though that depends on how mature the child is. 

Miyazaki has influenced a generation of younger animators, including those currently working for Pixar and Disney. All his usual themes are front and center in The Boy and the Heron, which, like The Wind Rises, continues to draw on his memories of life in Japan during World War II, and has a similar anti-war message. 

Watching an anti-war film while Israel is at war

It’s interesting to see an anti-war film during a war, and at the screening of The Boy and the Heron that I attended at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, an announcement was made that the movie opens with an air-raid alert siren that sounds very much like the sirens we hear when Hamas shoots missiles at us, and that we shouldn’t think that it was real.  We were also told where to go should an actual missile alert sound during the screening. 

The young hero of the movie, a child named Mahito, is awakened in Tokyo in the middle of the war by this siren, and, in a scene that reflects the chaotic moments that follow the sounding of such sirens, he rushes out, realizing that the hospital where his mother is staying has been bombed. 

The movie then picks up over a year after her death, when Mahito and his father relocate to a village far from the city, where his father runs an airplane factory. Any hope that this change could be a nice, new beginning for Mahito and his father is dashed when his young aunt Natsuko picks them up, and Mahito suddenly learns that his father and his aunt have married, and that his aunt is expecting a child. 

The scenes where Mahito must come to grips with the fact that his father has moved on so quickly, which he experiences as a betrayal that compounds the loss of his mother, are very strong and convey the helplessness of being a child. 

Bullied at school, he has no refuge anywhere, and comes up with a shocking lie to stay at home, where he is visited by a strange, malevolent talking heron. This heron leads him to explore the area and he discovers the remains of a once-lavish mansion on the property that was built by his late bookworm uncle. 

It’s not revealing anything unexpected to say that this site is a portal into another world, an underworld that is the realm of the dead. There, he meets a girl who has a special meaning for his life and must go on a quest to rescue his aunt, who has gone missing there. He must make quick decisions about how to proceed in this underworld, which is filled with cute creatures who are helpful, but also with birds of prey, including giant parakeets, that feed on humans. 

The quest is clearly a way for him to process the death of his mother and to come to terms with his stepmother. But it also works as a trippy, visually rich story of a journey through a fantastical world. 

The movie has stretches that feel slow, and you might find yourself wondering when one of the characters or talking birds will get to the point. But if you can flow with the feelings behind the movie and see it as a well-observed version of the psyche of a fragile and traumatized child, you will find much to enjoy and, as if it were a dream, you may find yourself thinking about it for days after you see it.