The Boy and the Heron

"The Grannies"

Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron is a late period masterwork from the revered Japanese animator. A fable set during the Second World War, the film is told from the point of view of Mahito, a male adolescent coming to terms with transition and loss. The Boy and the Heron plunges Mahito deep into an unconscious fantasy world which is a reflection of his conscious world. The strength of the film is that its phantasmagoric vision can be interpreted in a number of ways, ranging from a Buddhist perspective on spiritual regeneration to the traditional Freudian take on Oedipal triangulation, that are equally valid and insightful. No work in the director's ouevre has been as fecund since Spirited Away.

Motifs and characters from the film are reminiscent of the director's previous work. The "grannies" could have populated the cast of Porco Rosso or Howl's Moving Castle. One innovation for Miyazaki is the effective use of CGI in the fire sequences. Figures inspired by Japanese mythology, like the trickster heron figure, help guide Mahito in his painful transition to manhood. The film hinges, like all fables do, on simple moral aphorisms: that friends are forged in adversity and love is eternal.