The Boy and the Heron

I have never seen a Studio Ghibli movie, which I believe is important to admit up front. It's certainly a blemish on my cinematic resume, but also an indicator that it's wise to take this review with a grain of salt - and make your own decisions on The Boy and the Heron. 

Studio Ghibli is the famed group of animated films from legendary director and storyteller, Hayao Miyazaki. They're so big, there's even a "Ghibli World" theme park in Japan and across many years, their films have connected with audiences world wide. I've probably avoided them in the past as I'm not a huge fan of anime or Japanese animation in general. I know it's a huge subset of the animation "world", just has never been my thing. 

Despite that, I still enjoyed The Boy and the Heron, even if I did have some critical problems with it. Based on movie theater timing, I opted to see the English-dubbed version that has an insanely stacked cast of Christian Bale, Mark Hamill, Gemma Chan, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Robert Pattinson, and more. I'm not sure what the "best" way to view one of these is, but when you have a cast like that, it feels acceptable to skip the subtitles. 

The Boy and the Heron is about Mahito and his experience once he loses his mother and his father moves them to a new estate with the woman he's seeing. There's a mystery about this estate and eventually the new woman goes missing so Mahito and his frenemy, the Grey Heron, cross a threshold to go find his pseudo-mother. Bluntly, I couldn't explain more to you than that because The Boy and the Heron, while captivating, really struggled to make sense with me at times. There are jumps in scenes and story that left me disoriented and wondering what was going on. A perfect example would the be Parakeet King - a somewhat key villain - who is introduced in the final 15(?) minutes, with very little explanation of his motives or anything like that. In a way, this storytelling approach makes The Boy and the Heron feel whimsical, but whether this is "normal" procedure for Miyazaki storytelling or not, I did find issue with it. Unfortunately, I think it also buries some of the movie's meatier and more poignant takeaways as a result. This is a more mature animated film and Mahito does have some mental health issues, but it would take me a while to decipher just exactly the film was saying about all of that as it stands now. 

Luckily, confusion does not equal a bad film as The Boy and the Heron is anything but. It has gorgeous animation, filled with color and detailed environments. There's also a sense of pride that it takes in the mundane noises that I found weirdly mesmerizing. Spreading jam on toast, bare feet against wood floor, ladling soup into a bowl - all very normal things that the film spends time not only animating, but nailing the audio for. It also has a wild, child-like animation with parakeet enemies, magical settings, a heron-man whose beak is a hood, and many other instances of dream-like ideas baked in. That's all supported by a fantastic underlying original score - probably one of the year's best - that assists in hitting some of the more emotional beats. 

I'd be intrigued to continue watching some Studio Ghibli movies as The Boy and the Heron has a lot to offer (animation style, voice acting, music, imagination), even if it has some core issues with the pacing and storytelling holding it back. 

Rapid Rath's Review Score | 7.5/10