Esteemed director Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron is billed as the 82-year-old master's last film, following such movies as Spirited Away (2001) and Princess Mononoke (1997).
I wish I could say that Miyazaki's swan song was an unalloyed delight but I watched it with a conscious sense that a gifted animator was applying high levels of artistry to a story that focuses on a lonely boy.
Put another way, I was more attuned to Miyazaki's display of craft than to the story and its characters, even while chuckling over the director's willingness to fill the screen with wild ideas.
The Boy and Heron begins with its feet planted firmly in reality: Twelve-year-old Mahito suffers a terrible loss during the waning days of World War II when his mother dies in a fire at a hospital.
Time passes and Mahito moves to the country with his father, an engineer who's now married to the pregnant sister of his late wife.
The boy's isolation becomes palpable as he tries to adjust to a new environment. After he's attacked by bullies, Mahito slams his head with a rock so that he won't have to return to school.
True to the movie's title, Mahito is tormented by a pesky heron, a creature connected to the fateful turn the story will take.
The boy's encounter with the persistent heron, his head injury, and a visit to a mysterious tower that's supposed to be off limits allow Miyazaki to open the film's visual flood gates.
Mahito travels through an alternate reality he enters while visiting the forbidden tower. Pelicans display the personalities of vultures. A menacing army of giant parakeets marches to the orders of their narcissistic king. Floating creatures called Warawara represent the souls of yet-to-be-born humans.
The heron becomes a hybrid figure, a man/bird who reluctantly agrees to help Mahito return home.
Did I mention that Mahito also becomes responsible for the return of his stepmother who's also visiting this world? Or that he meets a young woman with mysterious powers and a sailor and ...
Let's just say that the story becomes overly crowded, simultaneously enchanting and confusing, funny and ominous.
If one wanted to abstract a theme from The Boy and the Heron, it might center on the interaction between fantasy and the reality, how the former can help one live in the latter.
I'd argue that The Boy and the Heron could have benefited from a stronger narrative through-line. Or maybe that's just me. Perhaps Miyazaki's fans won't mind, but if this is his last movie, it would have felt good to review it without reservation.
