The possible swan song from legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki is a powerful reckoning between dreams and reality
Even months removed from my first viewings of The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki’s alleged final film feels daunting to write about. After decades of searingly memorable animated classics, The Boy and the Heron defies easy categorization or swift analysis.
The film follows young Mahito, fresh from the wartime loss of his mother, as he adjusts to his new countryside life with his industrialist father and his new, pregnant stepmother, Natsuko. The relationship is contentious–in many ways, Natsuko is a clone of the mother Mahito lost–something that his father embraces yet only heightens Mahito’s confused grief and anger. Yet when Natsuko is kidnapped by mysterious forces inhabiting an abandoned tower on their property, Mahito takes it upon himself to rescue her. Bow and arrow in hand, Mahito follows the dubious guidance of a shady, shapeshifting heron into a disparately connected fantasia where the brain takes a logical and emotional backseat to the heart.
Perhaps that was a factor in Studio Ghibli’s decision to initially release it in its native Japan without any promotional material at all–an approach that I held fast to in the anticipatory weeks before Heron’s first American screenings. While beginning in such grounded terror during World War II, the fantasy of Heron quickly and deliberately untethers itself from concerns of consequence and plot. Sure, there’s a diligent focus on getting back Natsuko, but Mahito becomes diverted into stunning side-quests involving pelicans, cannibalistic parakeets, fire-slinging maidens, cryptid fisherwomen, and the amorphous blobs humans start as before birth. It’s impossible to predict just where Miyazaki’s film will take us next–but the film’s events feel far from arbitrary. There’s an imaginative logic that replaces traditional senses of causal connective tissue, with the senseless yet memorable imperative demands of dream-beings taking center stage. Regardless of how much this makes sense, the emotional impulses feel correct from moment to moment: we have to exit the graveyard like this, we have to get on the boat, and we can’t let the pelicans eat the warawara. Removed from the foundations of reality, we instinctively grab hold of whatever logical flotsam can save us. And with The Boy and the Heron, the result feels so viscerally real that any more clarifying approach risks ringing unbelievably false.
It’s an emotional honesty that Miyazaki has cultivated for decades, beginning in the trappings of reality before taking fantastic flights. As we follow a character like Spirited Away’s Chihiro into a world of yokai to save her parents, or Mei and Satsuki’s gradual realization of the world belonging to their Totoro neighbors, the immersion into fantasy feels like an incrementally granted permission for our inner children to embrace such freewheeling delights. While these two films in particular encourage audiences to lose themselves to their deepest dreams, the film that best explores the tension between dreams and reality is Miyazaki’s preceding film, The Wind Rises. There, Jiro’s literal flights of fancy are corrupted by translation into reality, and his dreams of flying machines are perverted by the demands of war and conflict. Try as he might to reconcile the two, there’s a disconnect between the world as he imagines it could be and the world as-is–whether it’s in the creation of his aircraft, or the losses he endures along the way. Throughout his films, Miyazaki expertly toes this line between a childlike fantasy and a corrupt, adult reality–attempting to recapture and bottle a natural sense magic and wonder we seem destined to lose as we grow older.
It’s incredibly fitting that Miyazaki’s magnum opus is the film of his that blurs this line the most–tossing aside pretensions of plot to reckon with the dreams and nightmares that seem to have plagued him for a lifetime. Miyazaki and producer Toshio Suzuki have been candid in interviews (including on this disc) about The Boy and the Heron’s autobiographical qualities, drawing from Miyazaki’s childhood and his relationships with his fellow collaborators Suzuki and recently-departed Isao Takahata to inform the development of Heron’s lead characters. With that in mind, The Boy and the Heron feels haunted by Miyazaki’s past and future, infusing the film’s powerful emotional dream logic with unshakable loss and regret. The film mourns what was as much as what will never be–whether it’s the innocence of childhood, old friends now gone, ideas that never came to pass, and ones that with the diminishing qualities of age will never come to be. Dreams are conventionally accepted as the brain processing its own experiences to delve meaning from experience and instruction on how to regulate and function; in that same vein, The Boy and the Heron feels like a grand creator reflecting upon decades of escape into fantasy, willing his dreams into something to experience to determine if anything meaningful came from it all.
The film itself, though, is its resounding answer to this tormented question. Through the burgeoning friendship between Mahito and Lady Himi, Miyazaki discovers a potential for rebirth among grief; and through the tense confrontation between universe-creator Granduncle and Mahito, Miyazaki reluctantly comes to terms with the potentially ill-fated compulsion to pass on his skills to a new generation, much like his own mentorship under Takahata. By exploring the terrifying depths of the unknown, Miyazaki–and his audience–find a comforting emotional closure by embracing such mystery and inevitable change. Effortlessly balancing a true-to-life emotional truth with a complete surrender to dreams and fantasy, The Boy and the Heron celebrates the joys and sorrows of life as Miyazaki has spent his life willing into reality.
Video/Audio
GKids and Shout! Studios present The Boy and the Heron in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, in 4K UHD with HDR10 and Dolby Vision on the 4K Disc, and in a 1080p transfer of the same source material on the Blu-ray. The original Japanese Audio and English dub are both presented in Dolby Atmos and 7.1-Channel DTS-HD Master Audio. A Spanish dub and an English descriptive audio track are included in 5.1-Channel Surround. The film’s English dub is set as default, with SDH “dub-titles” available, but English subtitles directly translating the film’s original Japanese audio are also included. French and Spanish subtitles are also included. Special Features are subtitled in English for non-English audio.
The Boy and the Heron is the first of hopefully many more Studio Ghibli features on 4K UHD, and this inaugural release sets a lofty bar for others to reach. The expanse of the UHD color palette allows the film’s cel animation to pop with diverse ranges of color, particularly during sequences inside the ruined tower or the film’s destructive conclusion. The rust and aging of various locales is finely rendered, as are wide-scope nature shots–both take on a relaxed, painterly quality while retaining a sharp amount of artistic detail. While the Blu-ray Disc features an exquisite HD version of the same transfer, the UHD disc makes for reference-quality viewing.
Equally expansive are the film’s Dolby Atmos tracks–viewers are immediately awash in a soundscape of sirens and crackling embers before giving way to Joe Hisaishi’s instantly iconic wistful piano-based score. These vibrant elements never eclipse the film’s dialogue, taking up the film’s center tracks. Both sets of vocal performances are extraordinary, with the Heron’s Masaki Suda and Robert Pattinson clear standouts as two famed heartthrob actors embracing their inner freaky lil’ guys. All of these elements coalesce into an audio presentation that utilizes every available speaker with nuance and grace, preserving the dreamlike immersion of the film.
Special Features
All special features are included on the accompanying Blu-ray Disc.
- Feature-Length Storyboards: A picture-in-picture presentation of the raw storyboards for The Boy and the Heron for the entire feature, providing an interesting look at the evolution of the film’s stunning visuals.
- Interview with Composer Joe Hisaishi: Miyazaki’s longtime sonic collaborator offers insights on his composition process, the simpler score of the film, and his work with Miyazaki overall.
- Interview with Producer Toshio Suzuki: Suzuki provides a candid perspective on reuniting Studio Ghibli in the wake of Miyazaki’s earlier retirement, his thoughts on Miyazaki basing the Heron character on him, and the future of traditional hand-drawn animation.
- Interview with Supervising Animator Takeshi Honda: The Boy and the Heron’s Supervising Animator discusses his previous collaborations with Miyazaki, the challenges in capturing the intricate details of some scenes, and the resonance of the film’s themes.
- Drawing with Takeshi Honda: The Boy and the Heron’s supervising animator creates brief sketches of the main characters of the film: Mahito & Himi, the Heron, and Kiriko.
- Spinning Globe Music Video: an entertaining music video for Kenshi Yonezu’s passionate ballad for the film, set to clips from the film.
- Teasers & Trailers for The Boy and the Heron’s domestic and international releases.
- Booklet featuring a poetic introduction to the film, Miyazaki’s original production proposal from July 2016, and assorted stills from the film.
- Poster for the film, featuring Mahito’s first confrontation with the Heron.
The Boy and the Heron is now available on 4K UHD/Blu-ray Steelbook, 4K UHD/Blu-ray Combo Pack, and Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack from Shout! Studios.
