The Boy and the Heron, by Miyazaki: disturbing and fascinating

The films of Hayao Miyazaki They are not essentially childish. They are stories in which what is constitutive, what is dominant, is the relationship between a human being – usually a child – and a fantastic being.

That great being can be extraordinarily good or the opposite. The imagination of the director of the jewelry store pleases The enchanted city, Princess Mononoke AND The incredible wandering castle works like a charm The boy and the heron, which is his darkest and most profound work. Winner of golden globe for Best Animated Feature, fortunately it premieres in Spanish and Japanese, with Spanish subtitles.

At 83 years old (filming took him many years) perhaps this is his farewell to cinema, something he proclaimed ten years ago, with the premiere of The wind picks up-.

Set in wartime imperial Japan in the early 1940s, it is a film that is both sad and a little hopeful, a reflection on life, death and nature.

Mahito, an eleven-year-old boy who lost his mother, will embark on a journey, but also one of discovery, through unknown places, as happened to Chihiro.

A siren sounds and Mahito gets up in fear. It’s the early 1940s, the Japanese empire is at war, and there in Tokyo he understands that a bombing is coming. What happened is that the bomb fell on the hospital where his mother was. And the boy, ignoring his father’s orders, runs there. The flames envelop everything and Mahito comes across for the first time the idea of ​​having lost his mother.

The hallucinations, dreams or nightmares, whatever you want to call them, in which she asks him to save her tighten even the most closed heart.

Years later, he is forced by his father Shoichi to move to the countryside. The residence is called Gray Heron Mansion, and there is Natsuko, who is expecting Shoichi’s child and is also the sister of Mahito’s mother.

A difficult life to face

Life in the villa will not be easy for the boy, between his adoptive mother and the seven elderly servants, in addition to the sense of guilt and pre-adolescent fears.

Furthermore, he hits his head with a stone until he bleeds and is locked in his room.

His life will change when a heron visits him and guides him to the dark terrain of the place, where a world exists far beyond Mahito’s imagination. It’s not very clear, but it would be between life and death, reason and absurdity.

There’s a portal you go through, which opens into a dark, fantasy world and what you find is more or less disturbing, among other things, parrots who dress like soldiers.

Mahito’s companion is the heron of the title, a bird that hides more than one might believe in its plumage, even a human face.

Hand-drawn by humans and not computers, the film is said to combine some events from the childhood of Miyazaki, a director who, if he is indeed retired, did so with a swansong.

Intricate, disturbing and fascinating.

“The boy and the heron”

Animation Japan, 2023. Original title: “Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka”. 124′, SAM 13. From: Hayao Miyazaki. Rooms: Hoyts Abasto, Cinemark Palermo, Cinépolis Recoleta and Avellaneda, Showcase Belgrano and Norcenter.