For any fans of Studio Ghibli and its legendary mastermind Hayao Miyazaki, ‘more of the same’ is just about the best review any new Ghibli film could receive. Yet, it’s also where The Boy and the Heron, the first Miyazaki-fronted project in 10 years and, until a recent change of heart, his purported swansong, falls a bit short. Yes, it’s packed to the gills with gorgeous animation and enjoyably surreal worldbuilding, but it’s so much ‘more of the same’ that it can’t quite live up to its grand billing as both the return and goodbye of perhaps animation’s most legendary director.
Loosely inspired by Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 graphic novel How Do You Live (the novel itself makes a brief but important appearance within the film), The Boy and the Heron mostly charts its own path as it follows 10 year old Mahito (Soma Santoki, giving a somewhat distractingly ‘grown up’ voice performance), a boy coming to terms with a terrible trauma. It’s near the end of the Second World War, and the firebombing of Tokyo kills Mahito’s mother and renders him and his slightly oafish father Shoichi (Takuya Kimura) homeless. Moving to the countryside to live with Mahito’s aunt Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura), Mahito is slowly introduced to the supernatural powers of the estate, concentrated within a mysterious and crumbling old tower.
With the titular Heron (Masaki Suda) – a strange beast with human features and a very grumpy attitude – as his guide, Mahito explores the tower, which soon reveals itself as a gateway to a realm *beyond*, both an afterlife and a before-life, a la Pixar’s Soul, where the Heron promises that Mahito can find his mother. It’s a classically otherworldly Ghibli tale, one that makes for an undeniably fun adventure, but lacks the sort of emotional weight that made films like Spirited Away such eternal joys.
None of the characters are quite likable or richly drawn enough to become fully invested in, and it’s generally the fantastical little creatures that Miyazaki conjures that prove the most memorable figures. As you would expect, The Boy and the Heron is very pretty, and though its world might not hit the instantly iconic and enigmatic heights of the very best of Ghibli’s past design work, there are plenty of elements here that balance the beautiful and the nightmarish, the hilarious and the grotesque.
Chief among these are probably the various species of malignant birds that Mahito keeps encountering, from the Heron to soul-eating pelicans to an army of oversized bipedal parakeets who balance their adorable goofiness with a hunger for human flesh (there’s enough actually gruesome stuff here that it certainly isn’t for younger children). It’s in these appearances – suggestive of a corrupted, too-human world – that Miyazaki can explore his trademark environmental themes, though The Boy and the Heron, much like The Wind Rises, is more concerned with questions of legacy than those of nature.
As a hand-drawn visual treat, The Boy and the Heron really delivers – especially pleasant as an antidote to the diabolically ugly 3D monstrosity Earwig and the Witch that until now served as the most recent Ghibli offering – but, right down to an overly abrupt ending, it doesn’t leave the sort of permanent impression that it should. It’s not like Miyazaki has anything to prove – his position in the filmic pantheon, animated or otherwise – has been long assured but, after so long away, this isn’t quite the return to greatness we were promised.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 