WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for The Boy and the Heron, in theaters December 2023.At the core of The Boy and the Heron, anime grandmaster Hayao Miyazaki’s 12th feature, is a stunning image of teetering, Jenga-like blocks that embodies and challenges Miyazaki’s world-building career. The movie follows Mahito Maki, a boy adjusting to a new home and a new stepmother during World War II. As he explores this curious but menacing territory, he is harassed by an unusual grey heron. The heron’s bizarre behavior leads Mahito into a parallel world, where he must reevaluate his relationship with grief, family, and worldly responsibilities.The other world in The Boy and the Heron is just one of many that exist within the movie’s cosmology. Mahito traverses a seemingly endless hallway with numbered doors, reminiscent of the doors to the various holiday towns in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Some doors open onto different times in Mahito’s world, but the rest remain closed to Mahito and are left to viewers’ imaginations. This rich image evokes a walk through an artist’s oeuvre, where layers of truth and fiction intersect with the past, present, and future. Miyazaki’s filmography contains a vast array of magical worlds, both within and parallel to the “real” world. In Spirited Away, the Alice-esque Chihiro passes into a mirror-like Wonderland, while films like Princess Mononoke and Ponyo delve into spiritual and fantastical elements relevant to Earth’s ecology. Perhaps these are just other doors along the hallway of Miyazaki’s career, but his latest world has a metafictional bent.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for The Boy and the Heron, in theaters December 2023.
At the core of The Boy and the Heron, anime grandmaster Hayao Miyazaki’s 12th feature, is a stunning image of teetering, Jenga-like blocks that embodies and challenges Miyazaki’s world-building career. The movie follows Mahito Maki, a boy adjusting to a new home and a new stepmother during World War II. As he explores this curious but menacing territory, he is harassed by an unusual grey heron. The heron’s bizarre behavior leads Mahito into a parallel world, where he must reevaluate his relationship with grief, family, and worldly responsibilities.
The other world in The Boy and the Heron is just one of many that exist within the movie’s cosmology. Mahito traverses a seemingly endless hallway with numbered doors, reminiscent of the doors to the various holiday towns in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Some doors open onto different times in Mahito’s world, but the rest remain closed to Mahito and are left to viewers’ imaginations. This rich image evokes a walk through an artist’s oeuvre, where layers of truth and fiction intersect with the past, present, and future. Miyazaki’s filmography contains a vast array of magical worlds, both within and parallel to the “real” world. In Spirited Away, the Alice-esque Chihiro passes into a mirror-like Wonderland, while films like Princess Mononoke and Ponyo delve into spiritual and fantastical elements relevant to Earth’s ecology. Perhaps these are just other doors along the hallway of Miyazaki’s career, but his latest world has a metafictional bent.
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