(For Day 18 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was for a poem in which the speaker desires to become someone or something else. With reincarnation featured in this movie, it seemed like a good fit.)

I’ve lived in fire, lived in water,
Lived as someone else’s daughter.
What can I be? What have I been?
How can I hope to choose again?

I have been loved from sky to sea,
But have I loved as selflessly?
Always been given, and it’s been heaven,
Lifting my heart like tender leaven.

How shall I live and love again
Back in the realm of mortal men?
Given new life, I’ll give to another.
I want to be someone else’s mother.
_________________________

MPA rating:  PG-13

Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli have an astounding track record of instant classics, they boast an unparalleled reputation in the animation industry, and yet they are not infallible. Despite its many accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, The Boy and the Heron is quite possibly the weakest film of Miyazaki’s catalog, an unfocused fantasy that is both too much and not enough.

Taking its Japanese title How Do You Live? from a 1937 coming-of-age novel referenced in the film, the story begins similar to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, with young Mahito Maki reeling from World War II and being brought to the countryside for safety. His mother lost in a hospital fire, he has no choice but to accept things as his father promptly marries her sister and moves him to a country estate. Mahito is drawn to a mysterious tower nearby, and a heron begins harassing him. When his pregnant aunt/stepmother disappears, the boy is led into a fantastical and very bird-oriented world as he commits to bringing her back while sorting out his conflicted feelings.

Ten years since his last film The Wind Rises, Miyazaki clearly had no shortage of ideas for his trademark imagination, but combining all of them into one fantasy world wasn’t the best move. After a rather long and boring prologue in the real world, Mahito’s introduction to the other dimension is a cavalcade of randomness, with a forbidden tomb, swarming pelicans, the butchering of a giant fish, and a representation of reincarnation, none of which really adds anything to Mahito’s story and feels more like padding to reinforce the world’s strangeness. There are also some other characters who have wandered in from the real world, yet they seem to fit right in, with magic powers and knowledge of how things work that Mahito lacks, making its rules further unclear. And the film keeps adding rules and characters right up to the end, making for a jumbled climax followed by a final scene that weirdly just… ends.

Of course, The Boy and the Heron does have its merits too, chief among them the gorgeous hand-drawn animation with that impeccable Ghibli style we haven’t seen in years. I enjoyed the middle section where Mahito teams up with a pyrokinetic girl and the little man who’s been wearing the heron like a suit, and the ending does have some touching themes involving family and personal choice. I only saw the English dub, and I have to applaud the star-studded voice cast, including Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, and especially Robert Pattinson sounding nothing like himself as the gremlin-like heron man.

Does it feel nice to have another Miyazaki film a decade after we thought his career was over? Sure. Did it deserve an Oscar? Nope, certainly not over Across the Spider-Verse, no matter what the Academy and critics say. Heck, The Boy and the Heron wasn’t even the best anime film I saw last year; I preferred Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume, and that wasn’t his strongest movie either. (Oddly, both films have a scene where characters’ true feelings of resentment bubble up to the surface in an outburst and then it’s never addressed again.) I won’t deny The Boy and the Heron its good points, especially visually, and it’s impressive how well it has performed with its experimental lack of initial promotion, coasting on the Miyazaki and Ghibli name, but I’m hoping the director can manage one more film that will hopefully end his career on a higher note.

Rank:  Honorable Mention

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