(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you appreciate what I do, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you enjoy this review!)
As I have watched and reviewed over 300 movies, it makes me feel grateful to be able to see so much amazing art being made by some of the best talent behind the animation scene. So many amazing folks, whether they are from the bottom to the top of the production team, pour their hearts and souls into these films. While sometimes it doesn’t work out due to whatever happens in production, when we do see something fly high in the sky, and it reaches the goals that it sets out to complete, it’s a marvel that there are so many amazing films made by the hands of real human artists. In the current battle of what’s going on with the animation industry here in the States and in places like Japan trying to replace animators with AI and cheaper alternatives, it means that we have to fight to make sure we don’t lose out on other amazing artists that can take their paths to create amazing work. We should all be thankful we live in a world where Hayao Miyazaki can come out of retirement and craft an Oscar-winning experience like The Boy and the Heron.
Directed and written by Hayao Miyazaki, we follow a young boy named Mahito, voiced by Luca Padovan. He loses his mother during a fire during the Pacific War (aka World War II), and shortly after that happens, he moves to Japan’s countryside away from Tokyo with his father Shoichi, voiced by Christian Bale, and his new wife who just happens to be the sister of his deceased mother. He is disconnected from his new mother, his father, the folks staying at the countryside estate, and from life itself after everything that happened with the fire. During his stay at the mansion, he finds a mysterious Grey Heron that pesters him by flying around and observing him. One day, the Heron, voiced by Robert Pattinson, speaks to Mahito. He tells the troubled boy that if he follows him, he can go find his mother who is alive. The boy decides to venture forth into a mysterious building by the estate to see if it’s true. What this ignites is a fantastical journey into another world for Mahito and the Grey Heron as they embark on traversing a world born of conflict and death.
So, the original movie’s title was How Do You Live? It means the movie is in the tradition of most Ghibli adaptations, loosely based on the source material. I remember reading folks being mad at the name change, but it’s more or less a homage to The King and the Mockingbird, the animated film that inspired Hayao Miyazaki. Even then, the original title itself shows up in The Boy and the Heron as a book that Mahito’s mom had. This movie has been considered one of the heavier and harder to get into of Miyazaki’s flicks, due to how it isn’t as “open” and “friendly” to the viewers of this world and story. I love Hayao Miyazaki’s work, and while I do see some of those complaints in this movie, I think letting the film sit in your mind to think about more, or going to see it again (if you can), does open up to be a more complex story about how one lives life. It’s interesting to note that Miyazaki named the film this title, because he didn’t have an answer to the question itself. He takes some biographical elements, as well as some homages to his previous work, and crafts a beautiful story about a boy discovering how he is supposed to live. Should he give up after his mother died? Should he take up the mantle of the wizard in the film voiced by Mark Hamill and bring balance to the world? Should he let go of the past and keep moving forward down his path? How does one keep living in a world full of strife and pain? It’s more philosophical with how Miyazaki framed this film’s story. Mahito struggles to find a way to create a world with no conflict when that isn’t possible, and feels like he has to take up the mantle of the previous generation’s work. What it boils down to is that you do what you need to and find your way to craft your own story. Life is messy and complicated. He also weaves in elements and commentary about nature, war, and how pride can destroy one’s self, as we see later on when one character ruins the world due to his actions. It has some dream and fairy tale logic to explain parts of its story, but why would anyone want an animated film to be as realistic as possible? Realism can be boring, and the demand for more “realistic” stories and writing is what gave us those awful Disney live-action remakes.
Do we even need to say how good the animation is for The Boy and the Heron? It’s Studio Ghibli! They tend to put out some of the best and most visually distinct animations in the overall industry. The beginning scene where the city is covered in flames is aggressive and violent. We see the visuals get rough and ragged as Mahito tries to run past the crowds to get to his mother. The countryside is emblematic and peaceful, the ocean shores are calm and filled with an ominous and mysterious tone from the cave on the shoreline, the parakeet city is bustling and filled to the brim with the monstrous bird folk, the garden found in the granduncle’s realm is lush and full of life, and the small home that the mysterious fire girl named Lady Himi is cozy and really homey. I mean, it’s a little cottage home, so it should be. There are too many amazing scenes to count where the animation just oozes with passion from the opening fire scene, the warawara floating up into the sky to become living beings, the first time Himi meets Mahito, the sequence where the Parakeet King and Granduncle walk and talk while the score for The Great Collapse plays, the multiple encounters and scenes with the Grey Heron, and you get the idea. The character chemistry between the major players of the story is fascinating. There is an uneven alliance between Mahito and the Heron that starts off antagonistic, but the journey they take together leads to some great moments that are also fairly funny. Despite its more philosophical tone at times, some comedic moments are more subtle than bombastic in the punchlines. Mahito’s animation is the most subtle of the bunch as his face generally defaults to one expression of a stoic closed-off individual, but the animators make tweaks as to how he reacts to everything once he begins to open up to the world around him and the people he meets. Instead of Mahito saying his change in worldview, the animation illustrates it perfectly. The Grey Heron is such an odd and out-there design with a small Danny Devito-looking weirdo inside a magical bird suit that sometimes when not in use, shows the human’s head and hands could come off distracting, but doesn’t. The parakeets were a fan favorite design from the screenings I went to, with how adorable they look, but how vicious they truly are works off of their fluffy looks with flying colors.
It was nice to see Miyazaki come back to a more fantastical world after he did The Wind Rises, which still had incredible animation and fantastical sequences, but they were few and far between compared to this one where it’s more 50/50 with the film taking place in both the real world and the fantasy world. Even the maids at the mansion each have their own quirky walk cycle, where you see who they are as characters just by looking at them. The music. Where to even start with Joe Hisaishi’s newest composition with some of the most elegant and mesmerizing tunes? If I had to pick a favorite song from last year from any movie, it would have to be The Great Collapse which plays near the end of the film. The combination of piano and stringed instruments makes my heart swoon as I feel myself carried away by its bountiful melody. Oh, and the theme song that plays at the end, Spinning Globe by famed artist Kenshi Yonezu is another whimsical display of beauty that caps us off on another Ghibli journey and one that was a long time coming. The voice cast is also the cat’s pajamas. English dubs for Ghibli films tend to be some of the best dubs around, and the celebrities they got this time around make for one of the more stacked casts in animation from 2023. Luca Padovan, Karen Fukuhara, Florence Pugh, Mark Hamill, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Dan Stevens, Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Barbra Goodson, Tony Revolori, Mamoudou Athie, and of course, Robert Pattinson as the titular bird. Hearing who is usually a pretty chill-looking guy go full-on gremlin mode with his performance shows how ready and excited he was to do some voice work for a Ghibli film. You don’t even get that it’s him most of the time, and instead, see the pathetic broken bird man that Mahito has to put up with. Some of the actors were more noticeable than others in their performances, but the acting was exquisite. If there was a best acting moment in the entire movie, it would have to be when Luca Padovan and Karen Fukuhara’s Mahito and Himi have to say goodbye to one another, and even though Himi is going to be going into her time period where she will end up perishing, she is okay with it because of how she gets to become Mahito’s mom. That scene alone still breaks me every time I think about it.
Whether this is the last film we will see of the acclaimed filmmaker or not, The Boy and the Heron is a wonderful and heartfelt journey through animation. A tale of a boy overcoming loss, dealing with grief, and learning to move on with the world. There is a reason why it has been showing up in almost every single Best Films of 2023 list and won a massive amount of awards, including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It should have been nominated for Best Picture and Best Score, but I digress. If you have yet to see this film, as of right now, it’s going through a theatrical re-release, and if you feel a little confused by it, go watch it again. It is one of those films that gets better the more times you watch it, and it’s already amazing when you see it once. Hopefully, with its theatrical release being a massive success, folks go seek out more films, from not just Ghibli, but other incredible filmmakers. They are out there and all you gotta do is take one step on that adventure.
Rating: Essential
The Other Side of Animation 