The Boy and the Heron (Anime Film) Review

 

It good.

 

I've left the first line intact from a little note left by my spouse. It's a mark of xer memory in this instance and a reason I smile when looking at this review. And memory is where we must go, going forward.

 

How do you live? With regret? With anxiety? With curiosity and abandon? Or holding onto everything and never letting a shred of things go? Do you craft then burden yourself with all of the pain of a thousand worlds and tomorrows? Or do you forget it all and allow yourself to hold onto naught, losing a version of yourself to yesterday?

 

In some way, the film The Boy and the Heron, otherwise known within Japan as How Do You Live? Is trying to fulfil some of an answer to this; and also seems content to answer it in its own capacity and move past it, not truly staying to leave an answer that will satisfy those hoping for a complex answer or at least one that is spelt out initially by its ending. What it instead portends seems to be a personal story of acceptance and closing the distance between ourselves and others in the now by abandoning the battlements of yesterday. It's a story focused on imagination and adventure but also the lingering will of yesteryear and its grip on our tomorrow. And within that world it crafts what I could best describe as a graphic children's fable, feeling cautionary in elements without going deep within an explanation of the caution it has to give. In this, it stumbles slightly.

 

Where it does not is in a visual magnificence that reinforces the beauty of a Ghibli work has not faded to my eyes after many years of it away. Consulting with friends, I've heard and accepted valid criticisms that could be noted and noticed upon scrutinized analysis or a focus on measuring how modern day Ghibli measures up to what has come before, especially considering the cross studio aid from places such as Production I.G., Studio Ponoc and Studio Khara to name a few. But for me in those moments a visual wonder beyond all expectation was restored to me, taking me back to an age where I was still experiencing the heyday, a Golden Age of international releases of Ghibli films and awaiting what visual mastery I had to look forward to. And for me as this film transforms the mundane into the magnificent and the beyond into something cosmic and abstract in elements, it was a wonder in truly the most definite of the word, my head resting on my spouses shoulder and giving me a moment to lose my breath. It is aided by a musical score that stands in the every aethereal and beautiful of Joe Hisashi's best allowing for the melancholy and wonder of a world not travelled to be brought powerfully to the forefront.  The worlds we cannot see and yet informed and known through our tragedy and escape, reminding me in some ways of the world implied in the intriguing Whisper of the Heart is what the world of the 'tower' takes me to and it is scored majestically.

 

Where the film falls a bit is in the nature its delivery as a dub which uses spacing among lines and some hard character work such as in the case of the Grand Uncle and the Grey Heron but as for the rest, it feels more than ever that the tradition of Ghibli to rely on big name stars rather than lean into the world of professional voice actors discredits it and feels numb to the world of today and the continuous disrespect that those of the profession see. Some delivery is flat, some feels like it doesn't quite convey the impact of moments of revelation and in the finale perhaps this is one reason the ending feels rushed. It's a moment within the piece that feels sudden perhaps and feels almost akin to the ending of Spirited Away. But in some ways, perhaps that is always the intent; a piece that ends as it begins, rooted in a fantasy that comes to a sudden crashing halt as we turn back to reality.

 

For me, the Boy and the Heron has faults but it did not stop me from seeing the efforts of a studio and of a man who has come to the end of his career. It is one last story book and work that does as Ghibli always has; told a story for children rooted in a personal idea and the world Myazaki himself came from and conveyed as a way to grasp an idea; the nature of, the attachments and boundaries of memory that inhabit us. Whether it will stay this way for me, is dependent on rewatches and a viewing of the sub to understand if the piece changes any meaning and delivery in native Japanese. But that is how I choose to live. And perhaps regardless of my intent, how Myazaki has chosen to end his lived career is enough to him. A wonderful end indeed.