One of the worst things about the internet is that any accomplishment-free nobody can get up on his soapbox and criticize the work of a brilliant artist who’s made several lifetimes’ worth of contributions to human creativity. The nerve of some people!
Anyway, here’s my review of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron.
(Intro music in audio version: “One Summer’s Day” from Spirited Away by Joe Hisaishi, performed somewhat competently by me.)
The first time I saw The Grand Budapest Hotel, I remember thinking that, although it was a fantastic and visually stunning film, it was also confirmation that Wes Anderson’s work had become irreversibly derivative of itself. His catalogue does have brief deviations of form, such as 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, and later The Isle of Dogs, but even those retained Anderson’s hallmarks — flowery dialogue, monotone delivery, carefully art-directed Old-World scenery, recurring cast members, and so on — so you never for a moment forget you’re watching a Wes Anderson film. The plots of his movies are now beside the point. You go because you want to see a Wes Anderson film, not because you’re exceptionally interested in a story about an old hotel or a French variety magazine.
This isn’t a bad thing. In a modern age wallpapered by Disneyfied superhero schlock cranked out via assembly-line with an occasional speckling of A24 arthouse captained by fledgling directors, Anderson has managed to maintain a distinct style undiluted by passing trends or financial expediency. Nobody does it like him. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t (and you make sure to tell everyone around just how much you don’t like it).
The point is you know what you’re going to get. Anderson’s films are like your favorite local cocktail bar. The drinks are good and sometimes there’s a new item on the menu but overall, you get what you expect.
This is not the kind of experience you want from a Hayao Miyazaki film. While Miyazaki has his own recurring hallmarks, each of his films stands on its own uniqueness, whether in story, feeling, or aesthetic. Princess Mononoke is miles apart from My Neighbor Totoro in both substance and target audience but both are powerful in a way that only Miyazaki can deliver. It’s the mystery of the adventure, both intellectual and emotional, that gets you excited for one of his films.
Unfortunately, The Boy and the Heron is more like Miyazaki’s version of late-stage Wes Anderson — a Greatest Hits compilations of themes and tropes that are explored better in his other films rather than a focused work of its own. It’s like Miyazaki saw a Miyazaki film and said, “I’m going to make a Miyazaki film.”
I suspect this is because the film is meant to be semi-autobiographical. Miyazaki turns the camera, so-to-speak, at himself in a way he’s never done before. In previous works, his childhood experiences, relationships, and philosophies were always explored in an abstracted manner, often through a young female protagonist or some other character who is not meant to be a direct stand-in for himself. The “problem,” if you can call it that, is he’s done such a great job exploring these things in his other work that it feels redundant here.
The second and more crucial problem has to do with the challenge that faces all autobiographical works: editing. In job interviews, most of us struggle to answer the “tell me about yourself” question with sufficient brevity. Now imagine you’re Miyazaki, deciding at 82-years-old to condense your entire life into 124 minutes. The result of attempting this challenge is a crowded film full of too many ideas and characters whose relationships and purposes are not given enough time to develop. As such, too much is either left up to interpretation or spelled out with uncharacteristic bluntness.
Let’s get into a couple of examples, which will include spoilers. But before we do, let me admit that I’ve only seen the film once in overdubbed English. There’s always a chance I missed something or that something was lost in translation or that there are some Japanese cultural references that I simply don’t understand.
Oh, and if you don’t want any spoilers, stop here and go see the film. Despite my criticisms, it’s definitely worth seeing. Any Miyazaki fan will find something to enjoy in this movie, even if it isn’t his greatest.
Spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.
In many ways, The Boy and the Heron falls short where much of modern cinema also fails: the balance of showing vs. telling. Go rewatch movies and TV shows from the past 6 – 8 years in similar genres (sci-fi, fantasy, Star Wars, Marvel, etc.) and you’ll notice a lot of the latter. Characters often describe plot points via clunky dialogue or explain how we, the viewer, are supposed to feel about a character, even if that character’s actions contradict what’s being said about them. We’re also expected to respect deep relationships between characters even when we see little evidence of their personal chemistry. Instead of allowing action and dialogue to reveal the evolution of these relationships over time, we’re simply told when something has changed.
An example of this in the The Boy and the Heron is Mahito’s relationship with Kiriko, the old woman who follows him into the spirit world and seemingly disappears until Mahito encounters her younger incarnation. Young Kiriko then becomes Mahito’s guide through the first part of his journey through the spirit world. Why? We don’t know. Back in reality, Kiriko is just one of the old ladies who lives at the estate with Mahito and his family. She’s not even the old lady who takes care of him after he injures himself with the rock. When Mahito first meets her in the spirit world, he recognizes her not because of her demeanor or because she’s playing a similar role to her real-life counterpart, but simply because of what she’s wearing. No indication is given that they have a special relationship in any way, and yet, in the spirit world, she becomes a figure of monumental importance.
At best, this can be interpreted as a symbol of things being reversed from reality in the spirit world. Old Kiriko follows Mahito in the real world while trying to prevent him from entering the spirit world, but on the other side Young Kiriko is the one leading him further into the spirit world. But that’s just a guess. All the film tells us is that we’re supposed to respect the importance of their relationship without showing us the particulars.
A similar tell vs. show problem occurs when Mahito encounters the younger version of his mother in the spirit world. First, he spies her from afar as she shoots flame into the sky to ward off predatory pelicans and later he meets her in person. Neither time does he display any emotion like surprise or confusion or joy or sadness even though earlier in the film we see several instances of him mourning her absence. I don’t know about you, but I’d be pretty flabbergasted if I saw my de-aged, previously dead mom shooting fire into the sky. Mahito, on the other hand, is rather stoic about the whole thing.
Compare this to the scene in My Neighbor Totoro when Satsuki breaks down crying in Granny’s arms after learning her mother won’t be coming home from the hospital. It brings you to tears because the film has been building up this moment. Up until then, Satsuki was playing the role of big sister, putting on a brave face for her father and younger sister Mae even though this terrible thing is happening to their family. This scene represents an evolution. From then on out Satsuki has to struggle between being a strong big sister and a frightened child. The complexity is touching and feels very relatable.
Mahito, by contrast, doesn’t change much throughout the entire film, so we’re never able to take emotional cues from him. A notable exception occurs when he finds Natsuko in the spirit world and she tells him she hates him. It’s shocking and forces him to acknowledge the consequences of having rebuked her many attempts at love and affection. He responds by finally calling her “Mother,” and it’s a powerful scene (in part because the spirit world around them is falling apart) but then the two are separated and not seen together again until the end of the film so the gravity of this transformation is not given time to develop. Again, we’re just told at the end, via a couple lines of dialogue, that he’s finally satisfied to accept her as his mother.
Perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps Miyazaki is trying to convey the real nature of such transformations, which still take time to develop even after one has committed to them. But then again, maybe it’s not.
Ironically, for a film that does so much telling, it’s rarely clear what the fuck’s going on. Case-in-point, the titular Heron character. I kept waiting for someone to explain why the Heron was actually a middle-aged balding man with a penis-nose, but that moment never comes. And why is the spirit world filled with giant, man-eating parakeets? Who is the Parakeet King supposed to represent and why doesn’t he show up until the end when he plays a huge role in the destruction of the spirit world? I’m not saying movies need to spoon feed all the answers to me but I would appreciate more clues than we’re given here.
Since the work is supposed to be semi-autobiographical, Miyazaki’s hardcore fans may understand some of the symbolism (this YouTuber does a thorough job of explaining such things) but I subscribe to the school that says a text should contain enough context inside of itself to be understood without reference to some other work — unless it’s part of a series or committing to abstraction wholesale in a Lynchian kind of way.
The phrase “dream logic” appears in other reviews I’ve read and you can undoubtedly see it at work in the film but I think the concept is doing a lot of heavy-lifting. Nearly the entire first half of the film takes place in reality, adhering to the logical rules of our everyday world. The Heron is the first indication that something otherworldly is happening, but the other characters can see him too, so we know Mahito is not dreaming his existence. Likewise, Natsuko’s grand-uncle’s mystical tower, which acts as the gateway between worlds, also exists in reality. Mahito has to physically travel through this portal to get in and out of the spirit world. This is a strong cue to the viewer that this spirit world will have strange rules of its own, but rules nonetheless, unlike a dream state, which can be entered simply via consciousness and can follow any tangent, constantly reforming its own internal logic at any given moment.
Recall how a similar construct is handled in Spirited Away. Chihiro enters the spirit world via the haunted amusement park at the very beginning of the film and is immediately initiated into the world through her interactions with Haku and Yin, who establish the logic of the world and set our expectations for the kinds of characters, events, and phenomena that will be encountered. With that accomplished, we can continue through the narrative and fill in the gaps where needed because we understand the basic rules. The Boy and the Heron is missing a similar world-building mechanism, so we’re left guessing in moments where our emotions should guide us. We don’t know what we’re seeing so we don’t know what to feel.
Overall, The Boy and the Heron can’t decide what it wants to be. Is it a surrealist, dreamlike narrative untethered from the traditional rules of storytelling? Is it an autobiographical tale full of meaningful symbolism? Is it a coming-of-age story about a boy accepting what fate has thrown at him? The film tries to do too much, be too many things, and introduce too many characters for it to accomplish any one of these directions to a satisfying degree. It feels more like the jumping off point for three or four other films that could be amazing in their own right, but together feel jumbled and confused.
That’s not to say it’s terrible. It’s just not Miyazaki’s best.
It greatly pains me to write anything less-than-ecstatic about a Miyazaki film. The man has overseen some of the most beautiful works of art ever produced in the medium of animation, and he’s earned his place among the pantheon of legendary filmmakers. There’s also no shame in having a weak film or two in such an impressive catalogue. That’s to be expected from any artist. The timing of this one is just a little bittersweet since it seems likely to be his last. That, I think, is why so many reviews are overly gushing about The Boy and the Heron’s greatness. It seems cruel to denigrate an old man’s work after all the wonderful things he’s made for us. Cruel or not, the truth is that The Boy and the Heron doesn’t compete with Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro or The Wind Rises. That bar is set so high that few could be expected to raise it again even in their prime, much less in their twilight.
I’d still recommend seeing The Boy and the Heron, if only to honor the great man. You will still have a good time. Just don’t expect to have the kind of transcendental experience you had the first time you saw a Miyazaki film. Those initial moments of awe are forever behind us, just like Mahito’s life with his mother, and can never be experienced again outside of dreams and memories.
(Outro music in audio version: “The Path of the Wind” from My Neighbor Totoro by Joe Hisaishi, performed pretty okay — not bad, even — by me)