Review: The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)

Fig. 1 - The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023).

Miyazaki Hayao’s newest film, The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dou ikiru ka『君たちはどう生きるか』lit. “How do you live?”[1]) is a Studio Ghibli film about personal growth in a world you cannot control. It’s a tad amusing, too, if you are reading this review before watching the film. I cannot say whether knowing anything before viewing the film is better, as the studio intended, or if context (and warning) are warranted to level any preconceptions based on Ghibli’s and Miyazaki’s reputations or general hype. In either case, perhaps it is best to view the film free of expectations beyond the obvious: beautiful, hand-drawn Ghibli animation (Fig. 1).

If you have heard of the film, it is likely due to the contexts around its existence rather than its contents: Miyazaki’s return from retirement; Studio Ghibli’s first full-length feature film in three years; the utter lack of promotion save for production updates and a few other brief features and a single poster; the star-studded cast (whose identities were kept under wraps until the film came out); the title shared with Yoshino Genzaburō’s 1937 novel of the same name, How Do You Live?; the fact that it allegedly draws on Miyazaki’s own childhood experiences during the war. Certainly, each of these aspects is tangible in the conversations around the film—now more than ever in advance of its theatrical North American release—and viewers will notice how each part of the film’s context is palpable in its hundred and twenty-odd minutes.

The film’s protagonist (“The Boy”) is Mahito (JP: Santoki Sōma / EN: Luca Padovan), a young boy who wakes up to the news that his mother’s hospital is on fire. It’s the late 1930s, and Japan is steeped in the Pacific War. Less than one year later, his father (JP: Kimura Takuya / EN: Christian Bale) remarries his late wife’s younger sister, Natsuko (JP: Kimura Yoshino / EN: Gemma Chan). Mahito and his father move from Tokyo to the countryside, where Natsuko lives in a large manor staffed by a cast of the elderly (Fig. 2). From their first day in the country, Mahito is all alone with Natsuko, who introduces herself as “your new mother” and places his hand on her pregnant belly in an attempt to bond. He does not speak a word until he wakes from a dream of his birthmother engulfed in fire, calling out to her. For his first day of school, his father insists on dropping Mahito off in the car, which only serves make Mahito’s classmates jeer. On the way home, he gets into a fight with some of them and, making his way home covered in dirt, picks up a rock to bash a large gash into the side of his head. His father is convinced that someone at school was the culprit; Mahito insists that he fell. Either way, he doesn’t go back to school.

Fig. 2 - Natsuko greets Mahito when he arrives in the countryside.

This strained home life becomes the backdrop of the first part of the film. Mahito feels neutral at best about his new stepmother, calling her “the person who my father loves” for much of the film. His father owns and runs a factory producing airplane parts for the Imperial Army, and invests more time in his work and finding the inflictor of Mahito’s head wound than considering his son’s adjustment to this new life. Natsuko seems to feel guilt over Mahito’s injury: she caresses his bandage and mentions how sorry she is to her sister for leaving her son with a wound like this. Mahito, however, does not respond, save for well-wishes regarding her difficult pregnancy.

All this makes for the foundation of a complex bildungsroman, and we haven’t even gotten to the bird. The titular Heron is the catalyst for all the strange, magical things that start happening to Mahito. The Heron (JP: Suda Masaki / EN: Robert Pattinson) swoops under the eaves of the traditional house and swoops by Mahito and Natsuko. A greeting, Natsuko interprets, but the close-up of the bird’s eye implies something more sinister. Curious, Mahito chases it to an abandoned, walled-off tower on his first day, only to find its shed feathers and a staircase. The Heron mocks Mahito through windows after he gashes open his head, calling out for “Mother” just as Mahito did upon waking from his dreams. In a confrontation, Mahito demands to know what The Heron is; in response, it tells him that his mother is alive and that he can meet her if he comes to the tower (Fig. 3).

Fig.3 - Mahito stares down the heron.

Mahito spots Natsuko wandering off toward the tower. Upon learning that Natsuko has disappeared, he and Kiriko, one of the grannies of the manor, set off toward the tower. Here, they get sucked into the Under-World (Shita no sekai 下の世界), where the rules of the world, space, and time are a little different than his own. This is where the bulk of Mahito’s adventure and path toward growth develops, and where the magical touch that we might call “Ghibli-esque” really emerges.

Viewers familiar with Ghibli will find narrative and affective parallels between The Boy and the Heron and My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke. The magical Under-World is full of surreal rules and processes, inexplicable phenomena, and various denizens both friendly and antagonistic, similar to the films above. Mahito forms relationships with a few of the world’s inhabitants in his attempt to save Natsuko and faces off with human-eating, human-sized parakeets and pelicans, all the while learning how to become more selfless and accepting of his circumstances and his own nature.

I suppose that my reservations come from the bewildered unease that lingered as the credits rolled both times I saw the film. Yes, it was a Ghibli film, filled with identifiable Ghibli motifs (flying, children, anthropomorphism, worlds-within-worlds, and so on, as Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc name) and a particular kind of laterally-focused composition of moving parts that emphasizes how animated the film is (as Thomas Lamarre defines)[2]. And yes, it was a heartwarming story of personal growth as we see Mahito absorb and digest his current circumstances to confront frightening situations.

What else was I to do with it? Things that could easily be explained away by it being, well, Miyazaki and Ghibli seem like a disservice to the film as well as a self-serving escape from the work of grappling with the film. The backdrop that parallels Miyazaki’s boyhood and the direct reference to Yoshino’s novel make it tempting to say we should make meaning through these other contexts. Certainly, the film mirrors none of these contexts perfectly; they do, however, help to define the setting.

Fig. 4 - The manor’s grannies rejoice over gifts of tinned fish, corned beef, and fruit from Tokyo.

Is this enough? The film is satisfying for contemplative digestion, digging through the gorgeously rendered backdrops and small details in the characters’ movements. Some of the best and most creative moments of animation happen in the first fifteen minutes of the film, such as the way the “camera” takes Mahito’s perspective as he follows his father upstairs to spot the fire that ravages his mother’s hospital and the fire-licked deformation of his sightline as he rushes toward the hospital. Toward the end of the film, however, I felt conscious that the creative, affective animation was re-oriented to a more narrative-driven—but still visually stunning—style in order to complete the plot. Unfortunately, this ever-important plot can be a bit confusing, with sudden developments that mark various arcs of Mahito’s development with little explanation or apology. Mahito is a fine protagonist, but he is not universally or immediately an object of empathy for the viewer. I found myself fairly detached from him and Natsuko, and much fonder of the grannies in the manor and the Under-World dwellers (Fig. 4).

One of the central points that the film seems to make is that structures in the world—any world, from the Under-World to Mahito’s world to our world—are not immovable and permanent. Instead, The World (to whatever scale you interpret) becomes whatever you do with it, whether it is to maintain the status quo or let go and have the pieces fall where they may. For this reason, the World War II setting seems relevant in a way that transcends Miyazaki’s experience-based writing. What does anyone owe The World in which they find themself? With what level of duty should they (or we, or I, or you) shoulder the burdens of a collective past? Have any of these questions changed between the mid-20th century and now? If so, if not, why? But don’t let the stakes get to you. You don’t need to watch this film to try and answer the titular question, “How do you live?,” but you might as well enjoy the animation while you mull over it.

(All images taken from Eiga.com 映画.com (https://eiga.com/movie/98573/gallery/)

**Article published: December 8, 2023**

Notes

[1] Since modern Japanese does not distinguish between present and future tenses, the title could also be translated as, “How will you live?” I have chosen “Do” to follow the English-language translation of the book (mentioned later in this review) by Yoshino Genzaburō (pub. Algonquin Young Readers) from which the film draws its name. Moreover, because the “tachi” functions as a pluralizing suffix, the original title calls to all who read the title, signaling a sort of collective in which the individual “you” belongs to a group of “you”s.

[2] See Le Blanc and Odell (2009, 15-32) and Lamarre (2009, 41-42).

References

Lamarre, Thomas. The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2009.

Le Blanc, Michelle and Colin Odell. 2009. Studio Ghibli: The Films of Hayao Miyazaki. Harpenden: Kamera Books.

Biography

Rosaley Gai is a PhD student in Japanese literature at Stanford University.