Trailer for the movie "The Boy and the Heron"/courtesy of Lev Cinemas
The score: five stars/Walla! system, image processing
After announcing his retirement from the world of cinema, animation master Hayao Miyazaki returns to the big screen with a more personal film than ever that seals his impressive career.
That title could describe the new "The Boy and the Heron," but it was just as true a decade ago, with the release of his previous film, "The Rising Wind."
Miyazaki likes to say that he goes home almost like popsicle sellers at sea - he's done it three times already and each time he chose to stay for one more round, this time really last, definitely final.
It could happen again - The Boy and the Heron may have been marketed as somewhat of his last film, but an executive at his home studio, Studio Ghibli, has already revealed that the 83-year-old director continues to come to the office every day to develop his next film.
The question this time is less "does Miyazaki really want to direct another film" and more "is he even able to do it again".
Miyazaki is not only one of the greatest directors working in Japan today, he is probably the most recognized animation director in the world.
His special status allows him to work exactly as he wants.
That is, to create his films with years of manual and Sisyphean work, with every step of the animators working under him supervised by him personally.
This is not an easy job at any age, but especially not in the ninth decade of your life.
Whether it really turns out to be a farewell movie or whether we're in for one last-for-all-this-time-I-really-touched-red movie, The Boy and the Heron is simply great.
This is one of the most impressive, special and spectacular films that have been seen on cinema screens in recent years and it is so gratifying that it arrives in Israel with regular distribution, and even relatively quickly.
Next month it will compete for the title of best animated film at the Oscar ceremony and may win the director another Oscar - after the one he won in 2003 for "The Incredible Journey" and an honorary Oscar awarded to him in 2014.
"The Boy and the Heron"/Official website, courtesy of Lev Cinemas
Despite the cute and innocent-looking name, this is not exactly a movie for the whole family and it may confuse and frighten children in the single digits.
Even for older children or their parents, this is a very deceptive and quite scary film, if only because it opens with a long alarm (and thanks to the distributors for a warning slide that helps a little to prepare mentally).
The bombings of Tokyo in World War II separate the hero, Mahito, from his mother, who dies in a fire.
About a year later, the grief-stricken boy arrives at the new family home in the village, where he meets his new stepmother - none other than his mother's younger sister.
Moreover, a few moments into the first meeting, she announces to him that he will soon have a little brother or sister.
The father of the family's work in an airplane parts factory provides the family with financial well-being even during the war, but this privilege also has its drawbacks, such as the suspicion it arouses in Mahito's classmates.
Beyond that, near the large country house is a mysterious tower, which stars in a variety of strange stories about disappearances and mystical creatures.
Mahito begins to experience this strangeness for himself when a gray heron - a bird with a rich history of Japanese folklore behind it - begins to chase him and try to pull him into the tower.
At a certain point the almost realistic framing gives way to a completely disturbed fantasy story.
This is not new material for the creator, who specializes in stories about heroes and especially heroines on a strange journey that operates according to the logic of a dream.
This time it is a crazy journey even in relation to Miyazaki's previous works such as "The Wonderful Journey" or "The Moving Castle".
Mahito reaches a parallel dimension reminiscent of his own world, but after passing through a kaleidoscope lens that changed him in interesting ways.
There are symbolic layers in this world, echoes of mythology, stressful trippy moments as well as quite a bit of sadness and grief, which match his emotional state.
There is also a lot of humor, especially when an army of humanized and murderous parrots enters the picture.
"The Boy and the Heron"/Official website, courtesy of Lev Cinemas
In the documentary film (recommended) "The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness", which was filmed during the work on his previous film, Miyazaki notes that even the people who work with him in the studio most of the time do not understand the plot of his works.
In fact, even he himself does not always fully understand them.
However, these films have their own emotional logic and a pace that draws you into the story and comes out the other side confused but excited.
Even those who find all this a bit too much for them - or not enough - will probably agree that this is a simply beautiful work.
The visual richness here is almost unfathomable, from the colorful and detailed rooms to the character designs to nightmarish moments of the kind only animation can depict.
Mahito is not a big talker and much of what he is going through becomes clear to us through his facial expressions and body language.
Sometimes he is a wide-eyed, curious and excited child.
At other moments, he tries to convey toughness and maturity to hide his absolute age.
The second half of the title - the heron - turns out to be an enigmatic type who is sometimes a menacing villain, sometimes a completely ridiculous comic character and sometimes a lovable type who just wants to help.
These changes are also manifested in his physical appearance, about which it is better to know as little as possible in advance.
There is another host of strange and charming characters, some of them reminiscent of those that appeared in the director's previous works.
More in Walla!
"Bad Girls" was a masterpiece.
20 years later, it returns as a silly and casual musical
To the full article
"The Boy and the Heron"/Official website, courtesy of Lev Cinemas
All this magic is always tinged with pain, darkness and horror, like a glimpse into the nightmare of a child with a high fever.
The environment may change after the difficult opening scene, but the horror of war never completely disappears, and passes as a connecting line between different aspects of the emotional labyrinth in which the hero is imprisoned.
The original name of the film in Japanese, which can be translated as the question "How are you living?", is the same as the name of a beloved Japanese children's book that was a rather indirect inspiration for the plot of the film.
This question is a kind of connecting line between the different directions in which the plot turns.
The hero is at a critical junction between childhood and adulthood, and the painful changes in his life only make his search for identity more complicated.
The characters the hero will meet along the way provide him with several examples, different ways to add meaning and purpose to a life that often seems like a foregone failure.
One of those characters is that of a powerful sorcerer who is exhausted from trying to control order and harmony in the magical world he created.
Whether it is a representation of Miyazaki himself or the director's salute to his own mentor - his creative partner Isao Tahahata, who passed away in 2018 - it is easy to connect it with the director's feelings towards the end of his creative path.
In his last two films, the director incorporated more and more details from his personal biography, not as a nostalgic indulgence in the past, but to continue asking questions about human nature and the choices we make in life, whether in routine or in the darkest times.
And thankfully, he also remembers to take us back out into the real world with the hope that the future can be better.
More on the same topic:
Hayao Miyazaki
animation