Released a decade after his intended retirement, Hayao Miyazaki made The Boy and the Heron at 82 years old. The ambitious film treads familiar territory as a young boy goes on a journey to a brightly colored fantasy world where the living and the dead live in harmony (and there’s also an army of human-like parakeets). Set in 1940s Japan, the film centers 12-year-old Mahito, who has been mourning the death of his mother in a hospital fire after a Tokyo bombing raid by the Allies.
Miyazaki confronts this devastating event in a harrowing flashback sequence, set against a nearly black background, with huge balls of fire raining down on the city—it looks like hell on Earth. Miyazaki uses a hazy, sketch-like animation style to evoke the pain of Mahito’s memory. It’s a very visceral way to confront the audience with the pain and devastation of war, showing how trauma lives inside victims, especially the young ones, forever.
Mahito’s grief allows him to become easily swindled by a mysterious bird, voiced by a gravelly Robert Pattinson, who promises to reunite him with his mother. While The Boy and the Heron explores the ideas of grief, legacy, and family—which feel especially poignant coming from an older filmmaker—the story doesn’t quite come together as much as in Miyazaki’s other films, and the fantasy world is not as striking.
