He has once again outdone himself, the master of Japanese anime film art: “The Boy and the Heron”, according to his own admission, the final work of Hayao Miyazaki (82, “Princess Mononoke”), is a festival of colors and imagination .
Bernd Haasis
January 2, 2024 – 2:37 p.m
Hayao Miyazaki begins where he left off with “As the Wind Rises” in 2013: the bombing of Japan in World War II. The anime master had to endure a lot back then. Some criticized it for paying homage to Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the important Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane, and failing to mention that it was produced with Korean forced labor – right-wing conservative Japanese, on the other hand, found the film to be too unpatriotic. Miyazaki, previously always a clear pacifist, had probably chosen the wrong topic – and announced his resignation shortly afterwards.
The 82-year-old has still made one film. In “The Boy and the Heron” he first talks about being traumatized by war: twelve-year-old Mahito lost his mother in a hail of bombs in 1943. His father marries her sister Natsuko and moves with him to her estate in the country. The privileged boy gets into trouble at school and is soon followed by a strange heron who has a very human side.
Fire magic and Buddhism are at home in the Miyazaki multiverse
When his pregnant stepmother disappears, the heron guides Mahito to the forbidden ghost house on the edge of the estate. The real story – and Miyazaki’s magic – unfolds behind its walls. Space and time dissolve, actually decoupled levels of reality meet: welcome to the Miyazaki multiverse.
The wild sailor Kiriko and the fire sorceress Himi help the boy. Both seem strong and invincible, but as always with Miyazaki there are double bottoms. Nothing is set in stone, everything is constantly changing – a central thesis of Zen Buddhism is contained in the images here.
Less dominant than in “Princess Mononoke”, but no less impressive, the director devotes an episode to the needs of nature. People and animals compete for scarce resources; the pelicans can hardly find any fish in the parallel sphere because they are fed to maturing human souls. So the birds eat the souls when they ascend to the earthly world – a perfect parable of overexploitation and species extinction.
Birds are an issue at all; in addition to the herons and the pelicans, there is a dictatorially run colony of oversized parakeets. They walk upright, feed on meat and always carry knives and cleavers with them in case prey happens by – like Mahito.
The fireworker Himi makes the best jam bread in the world
Soon the unconscious Himi lies in a glass coffin like Snow White once did. She should be offered as a sacrifice to the world leader. He tries to contain evil in front of a floating rock by playing a seemingly random game with piled up blocks. This perfectly staged strand is a reminder of how much people often long for control and how rarely they actually have it reliably.
Sensuality is not neglected either. Himi, on a different time level with a completely different relationship to Mahito, makes the best jam bread in the world in her flowery house by the sea. Just like Almöhi once made the best raclette bread that the anime “Heidi” loved to eat in the 70s series; Miyazaki practiced his art there.
Himi is one of his typical heroines, and Natsuko’s housekeepers are also revenants from films like Spirited Away. Now you could shed crocodile tears that the master is leaving – or be happy that he is leaving a well-cultivated field behind: Makoto Shinkai (“Suzume”) and Mamoru Hosoda (“Belle”) continue the anime film tradition in Miyazaki’s spirit, too They leave no doubt that despite everything there is hope – if people find a way to live together. Shinkai makes no secret of his connection: the city in which his latest work “Suzume” is set is called Miyazaki.
Unlike the old master, who has switched to male protagonists since “Ponyo” (2008), his master students continue to rely on smart, courageous girls who save people from all kinds of threats – especially from themselves.
The Boy and the Heron. Japan 2023. Director: Hayao Miyazaki. 124 min. Ages 12 and up
2024-01-02 15:16:10
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