The movies of Hayao Miyazaki They are not essentially childish. They are stories in which what is constitutive, what is dominant, is the relationship between a human -usually a child- and a fantastic being.
That fantastic being can be fantastically good or the opposite. The imagination of the director of jewelry like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke y The incredible vagabond castle works like a charm The boy and the heron, which is his darkest and deepest work. Winner of the Golden Globe for the best animated film, luckily it premieres in Spanish and Japanese, with Spanish subtitles.
At 83 years old (the filming took him many years) perhaps this is his farewell to filmmaking – something he had proclaimed ten years ago, with the premiere of The wind rises-.
Set in wartime imperial Japan in the early years of the 1940s, it is a film that is between sad and somewhat hopeful, a reflection on life, death and nature.
Mahito, an eleven-year-old boy who is orphaned by his mother, will embark on a journey, but also one of discovery, through unknown places, as happened to Chihiro.
A siren sounds and Mahito gets up scared. It is the early years of the ’40s, the Japanese Empire is at war, and there in Tokyo he understands that a bombing is coming. What happened was that the bomb fell on the hospital where his mother was. And the boy, ignoring his father’s orders, runs there. The flames encompass everything, and Mahito comes across for the first time the idea that he has lost his mother.
The hallucinations, dreams or nightmares, whatever you want to call them, in which she asks him to save her squeeze even the most closed heart.
Mahito suffers the death of his mother and enters a world that mixes reality and fantasy.Years later, he is forced by his father Shoichi to move to the countryside. The residence is called Gray Heron Mansion, and there is Natsuko, who is expecting Shoichi’s child and is also Mahito’s mother’s sister.
A life that is difficult to cope with
Life in the mansion will not be easy for the boy, between the foster mother and the seven elderly servants, plus the feeling of guilt and his pre-adolescent fears.
What’s more, he hits his head with a stone until he bleeds and is locked in his room.
His life will change when a heron visits him and guides him to the shadowy terrain of the place, where there is a world that goes far beyond Mahito’s imagination. It is not very clear, but he would be between life and death, reason and absurdity.
The poster for the film, which won the Golden Globe for best animated film on Sunday.There is a portal that you go through, which opens into a dark fantasy world and what you find is more or less creepy, among other things, parrots that dress like soldiers.
Mahito’s companion is the heron of the title, a bird that hides more than one can believe in its plumage, even a human face.
Hand-drawn by humans and not computers, the film has been said to combine some events from Miyazaki’s own childhood, a filmmaker who, if he is indeed retiring, has done so with a swan song.
Tangled, disturbing and fascinating.
“The Boy and the Heron”
Animation Japan, 2023. Original title: “Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka”. 124’, SAM 13. Of: Hayao Miyazaki. Salas: Hoyts Abasto, Cinemark Palermo, Cinépolis Recoleta and Avellaneda, Showcase Belgrano and Norcenter.