The Boy and the Heron

Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Starring: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Yoshino Kimura, Shohei Hino
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Runtime: 124 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2024
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan

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Rating notes: Mild fantasy themes, animated violence and occasional coarse language

This is an animated, semi-autobiographical Japanese fantasy film about life and death in times of stress.

This feature-length fantasy film was produced in 2023 by Studio Ghibli, and references the 1937 novel of the same name by Genzaburo Yoshino. It follows a young boy, Mahito Maki, whose mother died in a war-time fire.

The film was awarded the 2023 Oscar for best animated feature, and is the most recent animated movie made by Studio Ghibli. It deals with the themes of age, conflict and loss, and the traumas that are evoked by coping with them in a modern world.

Following her death, Mahito enters a world of fantasy with a talking grey heron. The mischievous bird comforts him and promises to find his mother. Mahito is deceived at first by a watery-like imitation of his mother that is made by the heron, but it dissolves when he touches her reflection. Mahito pierces the heron’s beak with an arrow, and finds a birdman living inside the Heron. Multiple fantasy adventures follow.

The film has many autobiographical features – the hospital fire at the beginning of the film evokes personal memories for director Miyazaki, who lost his own mother in a fire, and the film’s themes ask viewers to reflect on their own life in a world marked by violence and uncertainty. The film visually depicts a journey of self-discovery that searches for personal meaning. The emotion that fuels its narrative expresses a boy’s yearning for the presence of his mother, amid soulful exploration of a variety of thought-provocative themes.

The film uses rich imagery to explore its themes and moves through its images at a rapid pace, making it a visually-complex movie. The animation in the film has fantasy figures that come alive with vivid colour and movement. This is a deeply imaginative film that gives life to a host of fairy tale themes and motifs, many of which are symbolic of the mix of good and evil in human life.

The film has many confusing elements in its narrative and its fantasy-adventuring is difficult to anticipate, but the richness of its imagery is always evident and highly impressive. The dialogue of the film is minimal, and Miyazaki’s film is deeply reflective. The film was on limited festival release in 2023, and has wider release in 2024.