Il ragazzo e l'airone

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.

A disjointed mess of a movie, with many confusing elements, and a non-cohesive storyline.

I went into it expecting a thoughtful farewell and bittersweet celebration of Miyazaki's legacy, and instead came out of the theater taken aback and disappointed. A work like this I would expect from Goro, not his father.

I cannot fathom how so many reviewers have given this movie nines or tens. By no means is it deserving of such high praise, and I have to believe this dissonance is due to fanboy-ism and an inability to criticize the work of someone they love.

Well, I love Miyazaki's work as well, but I also understand that it's important to be objective and not biased in an increasingly all too biased world.

I hope he creates another, and redeems himself, as I do not want this to be the note he ends his praise-worthy legacy on. Regardless, thanks for all the fantastic memories and moments you've already provided me, Mr. Miyazaki.

The imagery that completely stuck with me is when things overwhelm Mahito. From the frogs, to the pelicans, the warawara, the fish guts, and the parakeets. And Mahito's reaction is not even fight or flight. He stays still as if frozen and completely unable to react.

And that's maybe why it was important for Mahito to know that forgetting is normal. His feeling of loss and grief and the feeling of having to adjust to changes in his environment may be overwhelming and maybe a solution is trying to forget.

The granduncle is Miyazaki himself. He tries to find someone who can continue his legacy but in the end completely accepts that the worlds that he built and the stories he has told may crumble and completely be forgotten. And that is one truth that an artist will find hard to take.

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.

Seeing The Boy and The Heron, Hayao Miyazaki's latest movie feels almost like a monumental event in and of itself. It was announced almost as a surprise with the words "Hayao Miyazaki's last movie". With this amount of hype, including the amazing reviews it's got from critics, my hype was built up to the max. The end result? Not what I expected, and that's ok!

Let's get to the positives, the animation is STUNNING. The way Hayao Miyazaki manages to build these worlds and characters is just an amazing feat, they all come alive with the colours and the movement. Another positive is the tone of the movie, I really hate Disney for trying to market this as a kid's movie, when it's not. It's got some unnerving and scary moments and themes that are not suited for kids, which is good. Hayao Miyazaki is at his best when he manages to blend the adult with the fantastical.

The actors are always amazing, I saw the Japanese dub so I don't know how the western VAs are doing but wow; they all do a fantastic job!

Now to the negatives... a huge thing about Studio Ghibli movies in general, especially the ones from Hayao Miyazaki, is that they're always by rule driven by the characters, it's their journey that's in the front. World building and narrative always takes a second place in his movies to be able to not distract from the characters journeys, big examples of this are Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle where the world building is built by very simple and effective means and rules. But here in the Boy and The Heron the world building is so convoluted and confusing it almost feels like he wanted it to take center stage in this movie and it's such a shame because it feels at like it's at odds with it's own main character who supposedly undergoes a deep deep emotional journey but it all finishes off in a very abrupt and unfitting send-off in the end which really confused me and just didn't feel like a good payoff.

Also the way this movie introduces characters left and right with no rhyme or reason is super confusing. Once again, Hayao Miyazaki did this very minimally in his past movies where the characters get room to be explored and to leave an impact in the story but here once again it's at odds with its own world building- it all feels very haphazard and messy. The Heron is a fun character but I don't feel like he or Mahito do or learn anything from these adventures.

Now, it may sound like I hated this movie, but I didn't. It's just that I care so much about Hayao Miyazaki movies and Studio Ghibli movies that I can't help to compare them to the movies we've seen before. And despite it not being Hayao Miyazaki's best it's still pretty good, it's very much worth a watch.