- Oct 17, 2008
- 14,339
The Boy and the Heron - Netflix
BAFTA Best Animated Picture
Golden Globe Best Animated Picture
Academy Aware Best Animated Picture
7.4 IMDB, 97% Rotten Tomatoes
Here be spoilers for “The Boy and the Heron”:
This was absolutely batshit. I mean completely mental.
I am no anime fan, I generally find it weird. But I can abide controlled weirdness, particularly when it’s wholesome and not overly sexualised like so many animes are. I really like My Neighbour Totoro, for instance.
But The Boy and the Heron… this was absolutely fruit loops.
This movie, legendary auteur Hayao Miyazaki’s swan song, went like billy-o at the box office, becoming the fifth biggest grossing Japanese blockbuster of all time.
No denying it’s a beautiful movie, and Joe Hisaishi’s score is happily predictably superb. But the plot…?! Even for Studio Ghibli (the East’s Disney, for those who aren’t familiar) this one fell asleep on the District Line and woke up in Barking.
It would be easy - and lazy - to say that as with most Ghibli movies, it centres around a young child transporting from their regular lives into a magical uncanny valley, meeting a magical creature, and then having a very gentle adventure.
While the above is true, and many of these recurring tropes are in play - among others such as exploring animism and a clear love of “the old ways” and tradition - The Boy and the Heron is a good deal more heavy and unsettling than the likes of Totoro.
On the surface, the story introduces the stock Anime protagonist child, Mahito. Rather than brimming with whimsy and curiosity, Mahito is an angry, traumatised shell of a boy grieving over the gruesome immolation of his mother during the Second World War. He is then evacuated with his father from Tokyo to the countryside with his father and his new wife, his late wife’s pregnant(!) identical sister.
After a quick bit of self-harm, as he gratuitously smashes his own head in with a rock, he meets a creepy semi-anthropomorphic talking heron, who leads him into a cave on promises of seeing his dead mum again.
He is tricked, and goes off for a standard Studio Ghibli® brand adventure.
This is an incredibly dark movie in themes, and much like Disney’s “Up” isn’t really about the surface plot - the titular talking heron. Neither is it about the wannabe Witch King of Angmar antagonist, or the crazy hijinx that occur throughout the second hour. This movie is about trauma, grieving and PTSD.
But in the end
.
In short, despite critical, commercial and audience success, I really didn’t get this movie. It’s so overwrought with heavy symbolism and metaphor and yes, is really, really weird. There isn’t a lot of humour (I found the comedy relief of the servants/maids in the household irritating rather than amusing).
I just don’t get who it’s for, mostly. The adventure portion in the second half of the film is fairly stock Ghibli stuff ideal for kids, the first half is decidedly creepy and I wouldn’t recommend it to younger children, giving it a very strange feeling of being both confused and confusing.
I mostly watched the English dub which is packed with stars such as Christian Bale, Robert Pattinson, Mark Hamill, Willem Dafoe, Florence Pugh and Dave Bautista. The acting is fine, I suppose, but I tried the Japanese dub and that was just as good to my ears.
2*
BAFTA Best Animated Picture
Golden Globe Best Animated Picture
Academy Aware Best Animated Picture
7.4 IMDB, 97% Rotten Tomatoes
Here be spoilers for “The Boy and the Heron”:
This was absolutely batshit. I mean completely mental.
I am no anime fan, I generally find it weird. But I can abide controlled weirdness, particularly when it’s wholesome and not overly sexualised like so many animes are. I really like My Neighbour Totoro, for instance.
But The Boy and the Heron… this was absolutely fruit loops.
This movie, legendary auteur Hayao Miyazaki’s swan song, went like billy-o at the box office, becoming the fifth biggest grossing Japanese blockbuster of all time.
No denying it’s a beautiful movie, and Joe Hisaishi’s score is happily predictably superb. But the plot…?! Even for Studio Ghibli (the East’s Disney, for those who aren’t familiar) this one fell asleep on the District Line and woke up in Barking.
It would be easy - and lazy - to say that as with most Ghibli movies, it centres around a young child transporting from their regular lives into a magical uncanny valley, meeting a magical creature, and then having a very gentle adventure.
While the above is true, and many of these recurring tropes are in play - among others such as exploring animism and a clear love of “the old ways” and tradition - The Boy and the Heron is a good deal more heavy and unsettling than the likes of Totoro.
On the surface, the story introduces the stock Anime protagonist child, Mahito. Rather than brimming with whimsy and curiosity, Mahito is an angry, traumatised shell of a boy grieving over the gruesome immolation of his mother during the Second World War. He is then evacuated with his father from Tokyo to the countryside with his father and his new wife, his late wife’s pregnant(!) identical sister.
After a quick bit of self-harm, as he gratuitously smashes his own head in with a rock, he meets a creepy semi-anthropomorphic talking heron, who leads him into a cave on promises of seeing his dead mum again.
He is tricked, and goes off for a standard Studio Ghibli® brand adventure.
This is an incredibly dark movie in themes, and much like Disney’s “Up” isn’t really about the surface plot - the titular talking heron. Neither is it about the wannabe Witch King of Angmar antagonist, or the crazy hijinx that occur throughout the second hour. This movie is about trauma, grieving and PTSD.
But in the end
it turns out it was all a hallucination from his head injury with the rock anyway, giving us a cop-out surface happy ending, in a movie which is anything but
In short, despite critical, commercial and audience success, I really didn’t get this movie. It’s so overwrought with heavy symbolism and metaphor and yes, is really, really weird. There isn’t a lot of humour (I found the comedy relief of the servants/maids in the household irritating rather than amusing).
I just don’t get who it’s for, mostly. The adventure portion in the second half of the film is fairly stock Ghibli stuff ideal for kids, the first half is decidedly creepy and I wouldn’t recommend it to younger children, giving it a very strange feeling of being both confused and confusing.
I mostly watched the English dub which is packed with stars such as Christian Bale, Robert Pattinson, Mark Hamill, Willem Dafoe, Florence Pugh and Dave Bautista. The acting is fine, I suppose, but I tried the Japanese dub and that was just as good to my ears.
2*
