Written and Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Music by Joe Hisaishi
Theme Song by Kenshi Yonezu
Cinematography by Atsushi Okui
Edited by Takeshi Seyama
Produced by Toshio Suzuki
Voice Cast
Soma Santoki as Mahito
Masaki Suda as Grey Heron
Yoshino Kimura as Natsuko
Aimyon as Lady Himi
Ko Shibasaki as Kiriko
Jun Kunimura as Parakeet King
Takuya Kimura as Shoichi
Shohei Hino as Granduncle
. . .
“The tower’s full of parakeets.”
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
During World War II a Japanese boy named Mahito lives on a huge country estate run by servants far from any military violence. Mahito is not free from inner turmoil, however, as he is afflicted with grief he cannot express. His mother died during a hospital fire, and his father Shoichi-the boss of a factory that constructs cockpit canopies for fighter planes-has married Natsuko, his dead wife’s sister. Mahito can’t quite accept the reordered family arrangement even though his new mother is kind and loving. The boy is also starting to understand something about the imperial aggression of his nation when he witnesses a military parade meant to boost people’s morale complete with tanks, flags, and stirring slogans.
Mahito’s father likes to flaunt his wealth by puttering around in a tiny automobile. Shoichi drives his son to school, thinking that the other students will be impressed by the sight of the boy arriving in high technological style. Mahito, who is always dressed in a pristine militaristic uniform, comes off as a bit of a prince. The other boys decide to take him down a peg or two by beating him up, but the prince actually takes his licks better than expected. Mahito doesn’t win, but he’s still able to walk away from his beating with his head held high. In fact, Mahito ends up doing the most damage to himself by masochistically smashing his own head with a big rock. At first, this act of self-harm seems to be Mahito’s method of avoiding further humiliation at school, since this injury allows him to stay home for a week or two. Considering his toughness even in the face of defeat, one could see this little prince possibly earning the other boys’ respect if he stuck around, but he seemingly prefers solitude, or maybe solitude is all he’s capable of understanding at this stage of his life. This extreme gesture may alternatively be Mahito’s way of exerting control over a frustrating situation by determining the extent of his own defeat. But this head wound takes on a significance both stranger and deeper as the boy starts seeing weird supernatural beings and phenomena.
A grey heron that harrasses Mahito by speaking as a human.
A mysterious ruined tower that is believed to be full of sinister magic.
A great number of talking frogs that swarm Mahito’s body head to toe.
The talking grey heron eventually cajoles Mahito into following it inside a creepy derelict tower that functions as a gateway to a magical realm where spirits and talking animals rule.
Within the tower, Mahito confronts an empire of huge, belligerent parakeets led by a Parakeet King who would shatter the order of dreams to satisfy his unsatisfiable ambitions.
Most disturbingly, Mahito bears witness to a spiritual process of death and rebirth wherein cute, highly merchandisable plushy spirits ascend to be reborn as flesh and blood creatures of the “real” world . . . unless they are eaten while in transit by rapacious pelicans!
Is Mahito actually experiencing supernatural adventures, or has he deranged his perceptions by smashing himself in the head with a rock? Are we seeing the escapism fantasies of a boy overwhelmed by grief and frustration or are we meant to take what’s happening at face value? Could it be all of the above?
Magic and dreams manifest ambiguously tantalizing powers in The Boy and the Heron. Almost everything that occurs-whether in the “real” world or the “fantasy” realm-could be interpreted in various ways. You could approach it as a psychological allegory of Mahito’s loss of innocence as he reckons with grief and his growing understanding of the injustices of imperialism. Mahito is in an in-between stage of life: not really a child, not really an adult, everything in flux as he tries to make sense of a tumultuous world falling apart and reconstituting itself all around him. The Boy and the Heron could also just be a magical adventure bound up in its own hermetically sealed fantasy logic with no larger significance-which could also be a cosmic perspective, couldn’t it? All the wars and dreams and adventures and joy and suffering of the human species are pretty much doomed to be forgotten when the sun explodes. Nuclear annihilation could happen for any reason and at any moment. Climate change-which humanity seems unlikely to substantially address-could create dire circumstances that erase history and foreclose the future. Future plagues could emerge from evolutionary processes to snuff out humanity, shut down our carbon pollution nonsense, and give the rest of Nature a fighting chance to explore other paths of existence. Maybe humanity deserves to be subdued by the ferocious parakeet armies.
There’s also the pure visual pleasure of it all. The rigorously designed mysterious ruins of a tower that fell to earth “before the Meiji Revolution” or so the local legend goes. The hilarious colorful warrior parakeets who gleefully sharpen their blades to butcher Mahito. A labyrinth of illusions ruled by electrical living rock. A tough fisherwoman who educates Mahito on the realities of life and death by teaching him how to gut a bigass dream fish.
All of this comes from the venerated Studio Ghibli and the peerless taskmaster Hayao Miyazaki, a man who says he’s going to retire after each film, yet seems fated to die at his drawing board. The Boy and the Heron could well be Miyazaki’s final work . . . or he may yet outlive us all. Perhaps the visionary and masochistic Mahito expresses the plight of underpaid/overworked Japanese animators who abuse themselves in pursuit of sublime artificial visions of glory.
In the “real” world Mahito smashes himself in the head precipitating a torrent of blood, and, perhaps, a flood of visions.
Later, in the “fantasy” realm Mahito gobbles bread anointed with jam which almost seems to miraculously increase to match the boy’s hunger.
The Boy and the Heron could well be some kind of sadomasochistic classic.
