Japan’s most famous animator, Hayao Miyazaki, has returned from retirement. And after a ten-year hiatus, he made one of his best and darkest films. The charming, slightly autobiographical drama The Boy and the Heron, which is being screened in Czech cinemas, takes place at the end of the Second World War. Again, he invites the audience into an inscrutable world hidden behind ordinary reality.
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The film The Boy and the Heron is showing in Czech cinemas from Thursday. | Video: Aerofilms
The eighty-two-year-old Oscar winner for Journey to fantasy from 2001 became famous for his ability to tell about wonderful fantasy spaces that are often found unexpectedly close to reality.
The most amazing thing about these worlds is not the creatures that live in them, although the miraculous creatures – often undergoing various metamorphoses – belong to the color of the author’s work. The most peculiar thing about these imaginative planes of existence is that there is no traditional battle between good and evil. Even the most sinister-looking creatures can never be labeled villains here.
The same applies to the novel The Boy and the Heron. In the beginning, the hero Mahito loses his mother during a bombing. Her father marries her sister, and they move from war-torn Tokyo to the countryside, where Mahita becomes fascinated by a strange tower nearby. In addition, an insistent heron enters his already complicated inner world, full of longing for his mother, who provokes him at every turn.
When Mahito decides to investigate what is hidden in that tower where his mother is supposed to be still alive, things will never be the same.
We know the scheme from several of Miyazaki’s works. In the picture My neighbor Totoro a little girl found a strange furry creature with supernatural powers in the bushes behind the house, in Journey to Fantasy the central family got lost in a strange endowment. This time, however, the filmmaker takes the audience on the most complicated odyssey yet. Along with Mahit, he falls into a world that is collapsing on itself.
The hero of The Boy and the Heron is the teenage Mahito. | Photo: Aerofilms
Miyazaki once again charms with detailed, stunningly drawn environments, in which there is plenty of room for situational gags and purely physical action comedy stemming from what creatures the protagonist meets – and how they literally change before his eyes. At the same time, this world is even more complex and elusive than is usual with the esteemed director.
In this fantasy universe, Miyazaki finds a metaphor for what is happening in the real world. Mahito descends into chaos and constant uncertainty, reminiscent of our hopeless wartime reality. But the ambitions of The Boy and the Heron do not end here.
The Japanese director made a metaphysical story about what holds the world together, how it can be saved from collapse and disintegration. And it is not just an abstract consideration. The creator, who wanted to definitively end his career with this film, also presents a strongly personal story about our place in the world. He embodied another unforgettable child hero on the screen.
Hajao Miyazaki is still bursting with visual ideas, on an adventurous pilgrimage he refers to famous works of world cinema, from the films of Alfred Hitchcock to Back to the Future. And after a slightly embarrassing, ten-year-old picture The wind is rising this time he created one of his best works.
The Boy and the Heron begins unusually slowly, enveloped in the grief that surrounds the protagonists, but then it turns into a ride full of free associations, complicated and difficult to describe twists.
We can read them as a look into an excited child’s mind or as a much more complicated reflection on the possibilities of film narration. But make no mistake, the result is definitely not some theoretical art piece.
The movie The Boy and the Heron is also full of miraculous creatures. | Photo: Aerofilms
The Boy and the Heron is a fast-paced, constantly surprising adventure, but it’s much easier to get lost in than most cartoons, including Miyazaki’s. But it is the dizziness from this loss that is one of the strongest spectator experiences.
Exploring the most complex questions – such as what it means to be alive – the greatest living animator continues to amaze audiences. We can only hope: perhaps, as he has done several times before, he will not live up to the declaration that this is really his last film.
Film
The boy and the heron
Screenplay and direction: Hayao Miyazaki
Aerofilms, Czech premiere on November 23.
2023-11-24 14:04:36
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