The long-awaited return to the big screen from one of the most universally acclaimed animated filmmakers of all time, Hayao Miyazaki feels a bit shaky in terms of plotting and pacing, but when looking at The Boy and the Heron purely on a level of symbolism and subtext, it is a much richer experience thematically and emotionally. It is clear exactly what Miyazaki is trying to do with this one, so it can at least be appreciated for that even if it's not entirely satisfying as a cohesive narrative. Because yeah, the story beats in The Boy and the Heron feel quite choppy and haphazardly thrown together at times, which is easy to pin on Miyazaki losing his touch in his old age, but the structure is mostly arranged that way by design, despite how it initially appears.
One of the first things recognizable things about The Boy and the Heron is that it combines many elements of other films throughout Miyazaki's whole career. The first act of the film where the young protagonist, Mahito moves into a new house in the countryside without his mother where there is a mysterious tunnel in the woods and a strange magical creature lurking around, immediately brings to mind My Neighbor Totoro (1988). Then there's Mahito's plane engineer father who calls back to the great auteur's last film before this one, The Wind Rises (2013). The Warrawarra are adorable white blob creatures that look very similar to the Kodama in Princess Mononoke (1997) and also carry the energy of the soot sprites in Totoro. There's a hallway of doors that take you to different worlds much like the universe-changing door in Howl's Moving Castle (2004). The architecture of the castle that Mahito adventures through and climbs on the side of in the third act looks just like the titular Castle in the Sky (1986). The theme of being a child thrust into a strange new world all alone calls back to the protagonists of Spirited Away (2001) and Kiki's Delivery Service (1989). The list goes on and on.
On first watch, it appears to be a messy sort-of greatest hits compilation without any of the charisma that made those films great, but it actually makes a lot of sense as a metanarrative device. The film is all about legacy- about leaving behind a whole kingdom of dreams for one person to take over. So an easy interpretation to take away is that the granduncle wizard is Hayao Miyazaki, and Mahito is Goro Miyazaki. This film is about Miyazaki reckoning with the weight of his life's work on his son's shoulders, and the fear of leaving behind a whole world of stories and ideas for Goro to inherit. When Mahito stumbles around between setpieces- entire new worlds and characters and creatures and ideas all harkening back to moments throughout miyazaki's filmography- this is Goro facing the terrifying pressure of a whole lifetime of art that he has to carry with him. When his father is gone, he will be left with all these memories, these fragments, these building blocks, that he will have to make sense of himself. He'll have to pick up the pieces of his father's legacy and make something of his own with them.
The clunky movement between setpieces feels like watching Goro being overcome by the weight of his father's art, unable to control these creations and unable to make sense of how he fits into them- because how do you find your place in a world filled with great art that may be better than anything you'll ever create? How do you make your mark on the world when your whole life is defined by another person? As Mahito's mother proposes to him with the book she leaves behind for him, "How do you live?". Perhaps the moment when Mahito finds the book is Hayao asking Goro this question. And he asks it with compassion. He looks at the world through that same perspective of childlike wonder that he has throughout his filmography, but this time that child is his son. Miyazaki shows empathy for Goro by putting himself in the shoes of a scared, sad, confused young boy who has so much to carry on his shoulders.
It's sad that most of Goro's films have been met with poor reactions from audiences and critics, and there's often this perception of him from many people both in real life and online as a failed successor to his father, so it's heartwarming to see this film that feels like a passionate, loving tribute to him. Mahito has so much left to learn, and his granduncle knows this, yet he trusts him all the same. He has dedicated his whole life to the creation of his kingdom, and now he has to let Mahito learn for himself how to arrange the shapes in his own way and create his own beautiful world. In the end, Mahito chooses not to inherit this job, and his granduncle has to accept that Mahito's happiness comes at the cost of the destruction of his kingdom. Miyazaki has to reckon with the possibility that Goro may choose not to inherit his kingdom, or he may choose to and just ruin it. Similar to The Wind Rises, it's about the pain of creating art and being unable to control what is done with your creation in the future.
In a way, this film is similar to Wes Anderson's Asteroid City- another film that came out in 2023 from an auteur in the later stages of their career who poses existential questions about the evolution of their storytelling through a metanarrative. In that film, Anderson uses the frame of a play within a play within a television program to comment on how bored he is sometimes with telling the same stories over and over and how he has to work to find meaning underneath the artifice of his work which he has grown so used to. The nuke town of Asteroid City is literally a sandbox for him to test his ideas on its helpless inhabitants which he can position and move around in any way he wants. His craft is distilled to the bones of its former self, and he confronts the pain of not feeling the same joy he used to with these stories. In The Boy and the Heron, Miyazaki does a similar thing where he sets up all these beautiful scenarios that would've felt right at home in the magical whimsy of his earlier career, and then provides no payoff almost as to communicate the frustration of failing to pull off the same tricks he used to.
When Mahito enters the mysterious tower in his backyard for the first time, he sees the silhouette of his granduncle at the top, against the backdrop of a beautiful starry sky, but he never makes it up there. Instead, the floor sinks and he falls down into a new world. There is the setup of a goal to reach new heights, but he only falls downward. Then he arrives at an island where there is a beautiful golden gate leading into a tunnel. He pushes through the gate which seems to promise some adventure into a new fantastical world, but someone comes and stops him and he just walks backward and never sees that gate again. The beginning of a fairytale is written, but it never goes anywhere. This happens over and over again throughout the film as new threads begin and then close immediately. Mahito's granduncle has been rearranging these stone shapes all his life, and now he has no more new arrangements to make. Ideas that would have been ripe with potential years ago are now left unfinished. Miyazaki has to let Goro come up with his own ideas and arrangements from those same shapes.
Miyazaki is already working on another film as I type, but this would be such a fitting conclusion to his career. He tackles these ideas about legacy and creation so beautifully, even when it feels a bit rough around the edges. I suppose that's the charm of a late-stage auteur's work though. It's not as polished as his earlier works, but those cracks and blemishes are what make it special. In the end, I am left with the simple question, "How Do You Live?" (a much more fitting title than The Boy and the Heron). How will I go about my life knowing I'm going to have to leave it all behind someday- my creations, my memories, my hopes, my dreams? Those who come after me will have to pick up those pieces and find their own meaning in them, or maybe they'll simply be forgotten, who knows? It's out of my control. Learning to relinquish control is hard, but we're all going to have to do it someday.
Written by Owen Felton