Consider if you will that 2023 is the 100th anniversary of the Disney Corporation. The company has had, well, a bad time of it lately. Big releases flopped again and again. But they did have a big animated feature coming out: Wish. Just based on the trailers, it sure did look like the sort of movie that Disney would use as an anniversary release: fairy tale like setting, talking animals, sense of whimsy, a title that reflects on one of the company’s best known songs…and then it flopped both commercially and critically. Meanwhile, acclaimed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki decides to come out of retirement and do another hand-drawn work with Studio Ghibli. His The Boy and the Heron came out locally only a couple weeks after Wish, and it looks like just the fact Miyazaki made it is all the hype it needed. I haven’t felt the need to see Wish yet, but I can’t say I have ever seen a Studio Ghibli movie on a big screen.
Plus, I saw it on an IMAX screen, one where the movie was in Japanese with English subtitles. So, whoever the English language voice cast was, well, they weren’t in the version I saw, so I won’t be mentioning them despite the fact the English version had two Batmen.
It’s 1943, and young Mahito’s mother dies in a fire at the Tokyo hospital where she works. After some time, Mahito’s father, a factory owner, moves with his son to the countryside to live with his second wife, Mahito’s Aunt Natsuko, Mahito’s mother’s younger sister. Natsuko is already pregnant with Mahito’s unborn younger sibling, and Mahito isn’t really ready to open up to her or anyone else for that matter as he’s still in mourning. But then this grey heron seems to be pestering him as he moves into his new home with his father, stepmother, and a host of elderly folks who seem to be servants (it’s not 100% clear to me, but it doesn’t much matter either). There’s something off about this heron, too. It seems to talk, the beak sometimes seems to have teeth or even the edge of a large, human-like nose poking out, and it has some sort of nasty side.
But then Natsuko disappears, and a tower built by Natsuko’s granduncle years ago seems to be where she might have gone. Mahito and an unwitting elderly maid follow the heron there, only to learn it is a trap, one Mahito manages to beat, but the Master of the Tower has a task for Mahito and the heron, one that sends both to an alternate world, one where there are many dangers and strange sights, and if Mahito wants to rescue his stepmother before the baby is born, he’s going to have to find a way to solve the mystery of this other world. Can he do this while still still in deep grief over his mother’s death?
I said above that this was my first Studio Ghibli movie to see on a big screen, and this movie has some gorgeous animation on display. The hospital fire from the opening minutes, plus various fire effects from other scenes, looked great, and the slow pace of the story showed a real difference from, say, a more fast-paced Disney movie. Worth noting that this is a Miyazaki feature, so there is going to be a strong pacifist message. Violence doesn’t solve problems in a Studio Ghibli movie in general, and even with the World War II setting, the closest anyone has to a violent solution to try to save the day is a moment when Mahito’s father charges what he thinks is responsible for his wife and son’s respective disappearances only to find that nothing really happens other than some general confusion.
The previously-mentioned slow pace actually allows the viewer to really enjoy the animation with some beautiful scenes of rolling fields and underground cities filled with human-sized parakeets that manage to be both threatening and cute at the same time as the closest the movie comes to antagonists. The movie’s main theme seems to be accepting that life goes on while still valuing others for who and what they are. It’s not a message I think appears much in family entertainment, at least of the American variety, and the story is told beautifully as a result. Then again, the fact Miyazaki made it is probably why it was beautifully told. It may not matter. This is just a beautiful animated feature.
Grade: A
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