El niño y la garza

If you have never watched a Hayao Miyazaki film, I wouldn't recommend starting with The Boy and the Heron.

For an introduction I'd recommend to start with Spirited Away (2001) and Princess Mononoke (1997).

If you become amused and the films resonate with you. Then you will enjoy The Boy and Heron. It isn't the strongest of Hayao Miyazaki and Ghibli films but a very good addition to their filmography.

The film begins with a slow pace of mostly visually defining the world, characters and their dilemmas. As the movie progresses you see touches of another realm. Before you know it, it becomes a full-blown feverish dream of Hayao Miyazaki imagination and story telling. It eventually comes all together back on its feet at the end.

Was it fun and visually pleasing? Yes.

Was I confused at times And had a lot of unanswered question? Also yes.

This is one of the good ones. However it reflects as much the passion and skill of Hayao Miyazaki as his old age confusion. His latest "last movie" starts one way and ends (abruptly) another. It has elements from his own life, his previous work and some new ideas, but the gist of the film is reconciling with loss and moving forward, recognizing there isn't much one can do. A very old man mentality in a movie about a child entering a magical world filled with wonder and dream logic.

The animation was so beautiful, the story a bit disjointed, but quite captivating. It was the ending that kind of disappointed. This film has been a long time in the making (in 2019 it was 15% complete, allegedly, with Miyazaki directing a minute of the film a month) and it shows.

The Japanese title is "How do you live?", the same as the Genzaburo Yoshino's instructional coming-of-age novel that Miyazaki's mother gifted him. In the film, the boy finds the book with a message from his dead mother, instructing him to read it, but it never goes anywhere. There are a lot of other hints and symbols that are quite opaque to non-Japanese, so I felt that I've missed chunks of what the movie was supposed to convey.

Perhaps the most interesting quality of the film is how easily it can be interpreted multiple ways, the ambiguity both confusing and thought provoking. As we experience dream and child logic we get a glimpse of the transmuted reality underneath. The grief, the loss, the benevolent yet oppressive culture, the futility and pain of war, the missing and missed parenting and so on.

Bottom line: is it a masterpiece or a slice of Miyazaki, jumbled beyond recognition? Both. I felt it might be a fitting farewell film, but also that I missed so many meanings from it. I liked it.

I have been recently getting into Studio Ghibli films and I've been impressed. I was highly looking forward to this movie strictly because it was the first time I got the opportunity to see a Miyazaki film on the big screen. And the English dub is studded with talent.

I must say... I feel let down. I almost fell asleep halfway through, and the ending didn't make sense. There was so much happening and things weren't explained. I understand that there was probably deep symbolism attached to certain writing choices, but what's the point if the viewer has no idea what they're trying to say?

There were some good scenes and some good humor, but overall I feel a little empty.

I'm a huge fan of Ghibli (I even have a Princess Mononoke tattoo to show).

I have to say, this movie left me wanting more.

The beginning of the movie feels slower (and mostly coherent) but slowly devolves into a beautiful collage of animation and music. Generally, it feels like the movie is formed as a sampler of the rest of Ghibli, pulling ideas and art from other titles like Spirited Away, Howl's, and Mononoke.

By the time the story comes together in a somewhat haphazard manner, you're pretty much at the end of the movie, and the deep ideas that were to be conveyed had no time to develop. There are various decisions made by the protagonists that lack rhyme or reason because everything critical was saved for the end. I imagine if you watch the movie another 2-3 more times you might catch onto what Miyazaki was intending, but it was certainly lost in a singular conventional theatre style viewing.

Is it worth watching simply based on art and music? In my opinion, yes, but if you're expecting a Ghibli level movie, you might be disappointed.

Mahito's life is dramatically changed, he's lost his mother, and his father has started a new life in the country, escaping a war. One day Mahito follows a heron, and enters a whole new fantasy world.

This first thing I'm going to start with, the visuals, what a feast for the eyes, it is a vividly, beautiful film, some of the scenes are honestly captivating, not just the animations themselves, but the colours and creativity.

To be honest, I can't say I fully understood what was going on, I did find myself needing to read up about the plot, as some of it did go over my head, I imagine this improves with a second viewing.

It feels like a very personal story, I wonder if Miyazaki was exercising personal demons through it. As always there's a strong moral angle running through it, but plenty of really good scenes.

I'm nitpicking, but I did prefer Spirited Away, maybe simply because I found it easier to follow, but I'd recommend this very highly.

Worth seeing for the incredible visuals alone.

7/10.