THE BOY AND THE HERON

The Boy and the Heron is a transcendent look at the worlds we leave behind.

85/100

Original Release: 2023

Directed By: Hayao Miyazaki

Cast: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Aimyon

Favourite Quote:

“Forgetting is normal.”

Favourite Shot: 

Watching Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron is an almost hypnotic experience. It puts you in a trance. It is beautiful and magical and melancholic. And it is a meditation on grief, legacy, the unconscious mind, lost worlds and ultimately the question: How do you live? 

Watching the film feels like a dream. Every time you watch it you remember different scenes and forget about others you remembered before. The film is like a huge set of drawers and every time you watch the film certain drawers stick out from the set. And they change each time.

Set in Tokyo during the Pacific War, the first scene of the film shows the main character Mahito (Soma Santoki) being woken because his mother’s hospital is on fire. We watch as he rushes out to go to her, but as he gets to the door he realises he has forgotten to get dressed. He changes and runs into the street. 

It is animated as if it is already a memory that will be replayed over and over in his head. All the other people are fading out of the frame and the fire is almost engulfing Mahito as he runs. Could he have saved her if he didn’t take the moments to get changed? It is a visceral opening scene which rules over all the scenes to follow. 

Two years later Mahito moves to the countryside. He arrives at the home of his dead mother’s sister, who is now going to be his new mother, and is shown into his new bedroom. She leaves him alone and he immediately drops into the bed and falls into a slumber. Just this small moment perfectly captures the feeling of exhaustion from it all. 

Another impactful moment is when Mahito walks home from his first day at a new school and takes a rock from the ground and cracks it against the side of his head - drawing blood and cutting it open. He drops the rock, puts his hat back on with a squelch of blood and walks home as if nothing has happened. 

It is a scene of blunt force. It cuts through. The audience is snapped out of the hypnotism for a moment and we are forced to confront the pain Mahito is feeling. A pain so deep that physical harm no longer causes him feeling. 

At about a third of the way in, the film takes a turn into the realm of fantasy. Mahito descends into an oceanic world and appears in front of a giant looking tomb surrounded by a gate. Swarms of pelicans appear as he opens the gate and attack him, but do not eat him. It is a haunting vision of loneliness. 

He is then saved by a lady who is a younger version of a lady he knows. And she tells him that he is safe from the pelicans because he is under the guide of the heron (Masaki Suda). And then they sail on a boat next to row boats filled with dead people. And like in a dream it makes sense, but it also doesn’t.

The rest of the film is similar to this. Each scene is just exquisitely detailed and somehow touches something deep inside you. And you are forced to remember remnants of each scene. You remember the squelch of the blood in the hat and the insides of the fish squirting out onto Mahito as if they happened to you. 

You remember the way the parakeets hold knives behind their backs because they plan to eat Mahito. And you remember the horror of Mahito’s new mother telling him that she hates him when he enters her room. And you remember the almost glowing colour of the strawberry jam that Mahito’s mother spreads on her homemade bread.

And you remember when Mahito meets his grandfather, who tells him about the tower that he must rebuild over and over again. And you remember the scene where Mahito visualises adding a new shape to the tower and realises that it is a terrible foundation for an entire world to be built upon. 

And you remember the Heron finally helping Mahito by dressing up as a parakeet. And you remember the chief parakeet trying to build the tower and knocking it over in anger because he can’t do it. 

And you remember a world falling apart and Mahito and his mother being flown through the destruction by the heron. And then you remember one last glance between Mahito and his mother who tells him it is worth dying if she gets to have him as a son. 

All these moments are gut punches, but also moving and constructed in a way that seperates them from one another, but also creates something extraordinary when merged together. 

The film leaves a lot open to the viewer. For someone who knows about Miyazaki and his life. The film seems to be about reckoning with the idea that he created all of this (his films, Studio Ghibli), and that it is now time for him to leave it behind. 

And although he is proud of it and although he loves it. He’s okay with it being destroyed and something better being born from its ashes. 

But the film is also about grief. And seems to be a look into the unconscious mind dealing with grief. And all the different walls we put up and things we bury. And it also seems to be saying that we have to really go down there and sort through everything to heal. 

But then you remember the heron saying it’s okay not to remember. And this seems to be some sort of key to understanding the film. The Japanese title of the film is translated to ‘How do you live?’

And the main thesis that the 83 year old seems to give us, and this thesis has been present throughout the majority of his films, is that he has as many questions about the question even though he has lived as long as he has. And so the simple answer is that we must continue to live. That is all we can really do.

Worlds may be destroyed. Lives lost. Important things forgotten. But we must be okay with forgetting in order to move forward and to continue living.