The Boy and The Heron (2023) - A Modern Masterpiece of Art and Imagination

 The Boy and the Heron (2023)

Ok, here we are finally. I want to start with a very small premise: I will give some spoilers, not so much because I feel like ruining the film for people, but rather because I see this review more as a stream of consciousness than anything else, useful primarily for me to fully understand, or at least try to understand what I saw.Let's start right away (I'm on my way to doing the longest and most substantial review I've ever done 💀), by saying that this film is splendid. I must say that there were a lot of expectations on my part around this "The Boy and the Heron", obviously given by the fact that Studio Ghibli is synonymous with quality and that the aura around Master Hayao Miyazaki is now on a par with that of a deity. It certainly can't be said that I started out completely apathetic towards the film, not at all. Also because being lucky enough to see it in IMAX meant that my expectations were already sky high even before entering the theater: I actually have to admit that this WORK OF ART satisfied them 100%, even if not in the way in which I would have expected (we'll get to this later though).

The film begins in a masterful way, with what I consider to be the best animated scene I've ever seen in my life. So beautiful that I burst into tears in the first 3 minutes of the film (Miyazaki in a speedrun to make me cry in the shortest time possible, challenge won); the drawings and animations are so helpless in those first minutes that I literally exploded into tears not for the scene itself but for the "sublime" it aroused in my soul. I felt like a romantic painter faced with an exploding volcano. Incredible.Through these first images we are immediately immersed in what will be the main themes of the work, namely mourning, loss, and the overcoming and acceptance of these.The protagonist Mahito is then introduced, a boy of a few years old with an already adult mentality, forced by the war to move to the countryside with his father at the house of his aunt, who is pregnant by the boy's father (what a horrible context).With this incipit which vaguely recalls "Spirited Away" the adventure of the main character begins, even if unlike the director's most famous film, which can easily be interpreted as a Bildungsroman, here we are faced with a work which rather recalls a novel of acceptance. Much more mature and incredibly more cryptic, "The Boy and the Heron" is often not as easy to interpret as the author's previous works.After a first act without the slightest flaw, the adventure begins in all respects when the boy's aunt (Natsuko) and future mother of the same, disappears in the forest and the boy, moved by a sense of responsibility, (also thanks to the fact that he was unable to save his mother previously), sets out to look for her accompanied by a maid.

Up to this point nothing too incomprehensible, the first act of the film is in fact the most accessible and easy to understand, but from the second onwards things start to get...a lot more complicated.Mahito and the maid reach the tower in the center of the forest and from this point on the portion in the underworld begins, which is 100% reminiscent of Dante's journey into the underworld.We then move on to the Dantesque and central part of the film, in which the heron becomes the boy's guide (exactly like Virgil), to find his aunt/mother, who therefore takes on the meaning of woman angel or beloved woman, as Beatrice was for the great Poet.The boy continues his journey accompanied by the young version of the maid who acts as a ferryman (Charon) in this underwater world and takes the protagonist to an island in the sea. Here the main inhabitants are very sweet little spirits, the wara-wara, who represent the souls of people who have yet to be born in the "emerged" world. After arriving at their destination, the boy's companion feeds the small inhabitants of the island so that they can have the strength to reach the surface and become human beings, but just when they take flight some white pelicans begin to attack them, eating them. Now, from here onwards I begin to speculate a bit about what some elements in the film might represent: starting with the pelicans themselves, it could metaphorically be the Japanese people or in any case the oriental world, forced to hunt not so much because they were moved by hate but from an instinct due to survival and subsistence. The same dying pelican that Mahito encounters says that their children are unable to hunt because they cannot understand how to do so, they are unable to, a symbol of an increasingly Westernized East that is losing its culture and traditions to due to globalization by the West.

In contrast to these white pelicans, those who turn out to be the real "physical" antagonists of the film stand out, namely the parakeets, who would represent, again in my view, the Western world, always hungry for novelty, always hungry for wealth and information, which feeds not so much because it needs it but because it wants to do so in order to subdue and impose itself on others; supporting my thesis are two main elements: the element of weapons, meaning that the parakeets are the only ones armed in the underworld, and the presence of a leader referred to by the subjects themselves as "Duch," suggests that Miyazaki is referring to the totalitarian systems in Europe during World War II and consequently to the West at large, where capitalism and consumerism reign.According to this key reading then, the director wants to highlight that both sides of the world are evil and capable of killing, although with different intentions and ends. It is almost as if the Master wants to denounce this increasingly heavy renouncing of the tractions of the past by his people in order to embrace a modern world devoid of actual values and a functional moral compass.Continuing with the story, another character is introduced, namely Lady Himi, who in a film overflowing with Oedipal allegory, would close the triangle of maternal figures within her work, together with her aunt mother and her maid.She gets to the third act of the film quite quickly, perhaps too quickly.In this portion Mahito is kidnapped by parakeets, and after being freed by the gray heron, he enters his aunt's delivery room and manages to accept the woman as a new maternal figure, in one of the best animated scenes of the film. Having overcome this seemingly impossible obstacle for the protagonist's inner journey, we arrive at the meeting with the granduncle. 

Based on how I perceived the film and especially this final portion, I feel like giving the following interpretation.The great-uncle represents Hayao Miyazaki himself, who, having reached the end of his life, must understand who to leave his artistic legacy in the hands of, to whom he must leave his works and the world he created (understood both as the world inside of the tower that his world made of fantasy). Before he manages to convince Mahito to accept this offer, that is to take over the reins of the world he created and become the blood heir of the world in the tower, the king of the parakeets destroys the stones that determine balance and well-being of reality inside the tower, causing the world to literally disintegrate.Mahito, the aunt, Lady Himi (who turns out to be the protagonist's mother as a child) and the maid all manage to escape in time, saving themselves and returning to the outside world.Once on the other side we can see how Mahito overcame the trauma of his mother's mourning and how he brought with him from the underground world one of the stones that determined its balance.In the finale, the boy returns to Tokyo and in a certain sense gives an answer to the question in the title of the book left to him by his mother ("How Do You Live?"), that is, with his head held high, facing life as a journey made up of good and bad things.Now, understanding all the elements of these last moments of the film is impossible: who is really the great uncle? What is the flying stone that he observes with his nephew? What is world balance? What is the world inside the tower? What is the tower itself? What is the meaning of the stone that Mahito carries with him? What is the cave beyond the golden gate?In my opinion, the stone could represent ART and CREATIVITY. Not the art of animation or cinema but all art in the broadest sense. Consequently, the parakeets’ king could be the zoomorphization of death, understood both as the death of the director but also as the death of art, values and morality. This is why once the balance is destroyed the world explodes: there is no ideal world without art.The king can also be interpreted as the figure of the totalitarian state or states, which destroy creativity and art in favor of a world dotted with wars, in favor of production and industry.The balance of the world could be the growth of oneself, the acceptance of the inevitability of life and the world in which we live, dotted with differences that must be understood and accepted.According to these bases, the stone that Mahito carries with him is equally the hope and the artistic and moral legacy of Miyazaki: even after his death, the master's art will certainly continue to live on through his works, influencing artists everywhere the world and continuing to spread the balance of Beauty.

It remains only to understand the meaning of the golden gate: what is that entrance in the rock?What should not be disturbed? Most likely these answers were not given to us on purpose by the director, because he himself has yet to understand the true meaning of death, perhaps because there really isn't a meaning to give to death.This "The Boy and the Heron" is a wonderful work by one of the greatest artists of all time, whose objective is not to give answers but to arouse in the spectator the need to ask himself questions (How do I live?) and it is simply universal.However, it is not a work without flaws: some aspects are left to interpretation or are too cryptic to be understood, some narrative uses are not too successful, such as the aunt/mother dynamic which is extremely strange, or the third act and the ending that are EXTREMELY fast for nothing. As well as the lack of a final mother-son confrontation scene which I felt was sorely needed.But really, leaving aside these little things, the highs are so high that this film cannot be defined as less than a masterpiece: music by Joe Hisaishi, the animation, the cinematography, everything is perfect.I don't know if it really is the master's last film, but if it were to be, I can only be grateful for what we had. Thank you for everything Hayao Miyazaki-san❤️