Japanese animation master does it again
In July, as American moviegoers were experiencing a view of World War II in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” which climaxed with the test of the precursor to the atomic bombs that would detonate over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cinemagoers in Japan were seeing a different side of the war.
“The Boy and the Heron,” the 12th and quite possibly final animated film from 82-year-old master Hayao Miyazaki that debuted in his country over the summer, begins with the horrific firebombing of Tokyo. An 11-year-old boy, Mahito, witnesses his mother’s death. His father, a factory owner, relocates to a serene rural village, away from the bombs, and remarries — to his wife’s younger sister. But soon after, his father’s factory gets pressed into service to aid Japan’s war effort.
It’s a lot to process for anyone, much less a child.
So the boy confronts these confusing, life-changing events by disappearing into a Miyazaki dream world at the behest of an agenda-filled blue heron. It is a dreamworld where life and death exist simultaneously, filled with bizarre villains and allies, and threatening yet exhilarating adventures.
Miyazaki’s strange, wonderful universes are best absorbed as they go. If you’re a fan, note that it’s more of the ilk of 2001’s “Spirited Away,” about a 10year-old girl trying to process her family’s move to another town, than the more straightforward approach of “The Wind Rises” (2013), the biopic of aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi, which was Miyazaki’s previous film. Both are masterpieces in their own way — and we’re not even getting to “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988) or “Kiki’s Delivery Service” (1989).
Perhaps “The Boy and the Heron” falls a little short of such perfection. Still, it is one of the best animated films of the year. Like all of Miyazaki’s work in his more than half-century career, it has a distinct, handmade feel. And that’s the best part.
Contrast that with the many Hollywood studio animated films that are made by committee. Disney’s “Wish,” for example, also in theaters, is a $200
million film in which every visual rendering, every storyline, every character design and practically every line of dialogue was weighed, considered, debated, product-tested and eventually approved, not unlike a new line of automobile.
Great films can be made that way, but the results are often dull and predictable.
But “The Boy and the Heron” is unquestionably a personal vision, with its own internal logic. It has a direct conduit with the mind of its creator, who happens to be a genius and one of the best to ever do it. If this is it for Miyazaki, well, what a finish.