movies: the boy and the heron

It's been just under a decade since the last Studio Ghibli movie by Hayao Miyazaki came out... The Wind Rises... which I never fully reviewed because I fell asleep part way through (I still maintain that was because I was in the early stages of a massive ear infection). Good times.

But that does bring me around, quite nicely, to the new one... The Boy and the Heron... because, I'll be honest, it's been a little over three hours since I got out of the movie, and the whole thing still feels a little bit like an extended fever dream. Whether that was my fever dream or Miyazaki's I'm not entirely sure.

Which, in this case, isn't a bad thing. It's just a very, very, very strange movie. And not really what I was expecting.

Firstly though, as one would fully expect, it is stunningly beautiful. And there is a lot of animation, especially at the beginning, that feels a little different to previous Ghibli and Miyazaki's movies. It does kind of revert to the animation style we all know and love by the end, which I don't have an issue with, but seeing something new definitely caught my eye.

Completely by accident, we went to see the subtitled version rather than the dubbed version (so none of the names on the poster are remotely relevant), but it's not a dialogue heavy movie anyway, which was good.

It's just so incredibly... strange. The official blurb calls is "semi-autobiographical fantasy", but, honestly, when was a Miyazaki movie not semi-autobiographical in some way. And I can very much see the parts that would fit the bill here. But the rest of it, like I said, feels like some sort of bird related fever dream.

Also, a lot of the character motivations are muddy at best. There are certain things that our lead character of Mahito does that I don't completely understand the reasons for, or, I have theories, but the movie doesn't confirm or deny them. Likewise with his aunt who is also his new stepmother (the internet tells me that that's called levirate marriage, but it also doesn't seem to be something that is widely done in modern Japan). But the issue is that... I didn't like his aunt/stepmother very much, she seemed a little odd/pushy, and I actually thought she might be the villain of the piece. Turns out no. But I also wasn't emotionally invested in her when she became important to the plot.

Honestly though, everybody could have done with having a little more motivation and a little more of their character explored.

Favourite character? Kiriko, absolutely.

Also, without spoiling anything... there's a lot of birds in this movie. Like, a lot. Anyone who has issues with birds should be fully warned.

There are also moments that feel very much like they were drawing inspiration or paying homage to some of Miyazaki's previous movies or Ghibli movies in general. But, again, that might just be because he and the studio have a visual style that they stick to, so things just look like My Neighbour Totoro or The Wind Rises or even Ponyo... but the Ghibliness of things like Arrietty also shine through.

Don't get me wrong though, none of this adds up to a bad movie. An incredibly confusing one at times, yes... bad, no. Did it also make me succumb to "just resting my eyes for a few moments" more than once? Absolutely... but they're very slow and hypnotic movies, so that's just a thing that's going to happen. Did it manage to stick the landing, which other Ghibli movies have sometimes failed to do? Yes, it did.

Do I want to see it again? Absolutely. Possibly the dubbed version, because I just want to see how they're different. And maybe just unpack the movie a little more.

yani's rating: 3 pelicans out of 5