The Boy and the Heron review – Portal to the past

If you’ve been yearning for a new Studio Ghibli film spearheaded by iconic Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki – it’s been over a decade now since 2013’s The Wind Rises – The Boy and the Heron delivers exactly what you could want: sumptuous hand-drawn visuals, a mix of the whimsical and the weird, and a final, lingering feeling of hope.

The Boy and the Heron won this year’s Academy Award for Animated Feature Film, signalling its quality, but at the same time it’s hard to deny that it’s a distinctly throwback experience. It represents the past of animation, not the future, and with closer inspection it demonstrates some fundamental structural flaws.

Coming across as Pan’s Labyrinth by way of Alice in Wonderland, with a dash of Piranesi, The Boy and the Heron liberally samples from Miyazaki’s own biography, with adolescent Mahito Maki relocating from Tokyo to the family’s country estate during World War II. Along with that adjustment, Mahito is struggling to accept his aunt Natsuko as his new mother, despite the fact she married his widowed father and is already pregnant. Matters come to a head when Natsuko disappears, and evidence points to the ruins of an old tower associated with strange events. Through the building, Mahito enters a fantastical universe that straddles life and death, and he’s alternatively helped and taunted by a trickster figure in the form of a grey heron.

At this point it’s worth mentioning that the English-language dubbed version of The Boy and the Heron has assembled an all-star voice cast. This includes the likes of Robert Pattinson, Florence Pugh, Gemma Chan, Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara and Mark Hamill.

The Boy and the Heron’s biggest problem is that its set-up is so leisurely. The film is half-over before Mahito enters the other world and our hero’s adventures from this point feel rushed. It’s hard not to compare to, say, Spirited Away, Miyazaki’s other Oscar winner, where heroine Chihiro is quickly set up in the bathhouse with the clear goal of saving her parents. Because The Boy and the Heron has so many creature encounters and events to squeeze in, there’s no breathing room for conversation or response that feels natural. Mahito achieves his heart’s desire at one point and does not react at all, smothering the poignancy of the moment.

It’s fun to see a role-reversal in a Miyazaki film, where a male audience-insert protagonist is paired with a magical female character for a change, but The Boy and the Heron leaves viewers shut out emotionally. It doesn’t seem fair to point the finger at culture differences either, as Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume (which didn’t score an Oscar nod but was nominated alongside The Boy the Heron at this year’s Annie Awards) is highly relatable and emotive, and features many similar storytelling ingredients to Ghibli movies.

On that note, there’s a strong feeling throughout The Boy and the Heron that you’re watching an animated film from a previous era. It doesn’t come across as dated per say but it is lacking in contemporary sensibilities – which does cast a shadow over it being named the top genre entry in the year 2024. At one point, Mahito is invited to become custodian of the fantasy world, given the freedom to shape it to his will, and while Miyazaki has indicated no plans to retire, the scene can be interpreted as his passing of the baton to a younger generation of animators, like Shinkai. As The Boy and the Heron ends abruptly and with minimal satisfaction, you have to question whether it is a bad thing really to move forward, retaining the knowledge gained by earlier lessons, but otherwise undertaking new journeys and trying new paths?

Following a premiere in Japan back in July 2023, and a release in the US on 8 December, The Boy and the Heron finally comes to South African cinemas today, 19 April, with alternating subbed and dubbed screenings.