The Boy and the Heron

The beginning of the new year has seen the latest work of an author who is now an institution not only for animation but for the entire world of cinema, brought to the cinema, among the usual Christmas comedies and modern films. Hayao Miyazaki, at 83 years old, continues his tireless production and 10 years after his previous film, he lands in theaters with The Boy and the Heron, brought as always to Italy thanks to the work of Lucky Red. The story begins in 1943 in Tokyo, while bloody battles of the Second World War are taking place in the Pacific. In a violent fire in a hospital, twelve-year-old Mahito Maki loses his mother who worked here as a nurse. The following year, his father marries Natsuko, his late mother's sister, and the three move to the country estate to get away from the war, thanks to her pregnancy. Here, Mahito struggles to get used to the new family situation, still suffers from the loss of his mother and is unable to bond with his classmates. A strange heron wanders around the forest and immediately seems interested in the boy and leads him to a mysterious abandoned tower. Following the heron's tracks, Mahito will find himself catapulted into an extraordinary world linked to his mother's past.
The film turns out to be a perfect combination of Miyazaki's style from the last period in which the author's imagination mixes with mythology and social themes drawn from personal experiences and always in defense of nature. The figure of the heron itself, chosen by the author as the keystone of the story, is linked in mythology to a symbol of purity and, according to folklore, they are messengers capable of connecting the real world with the world of spirits and the dead.
On an expressive level, it is undeniable that Miyazaki's style, which creates animations entirely by hand without using CGI or other modern technologies, is truly capable of arousing emotions and transmitting warmth through drawing in a way that has been partly lost today. And his own style seems to have further evolved, as much as it is possible for an eighty-year-old, with the addition of landscapes and backgrounds that almost seem like paintings made with watercolors, often used to emphasize scenes with dreamlike contexts.
Another classic of the author is the historical context in which the story takes place, 1943 during the Second World War, in which Miyazaki manages to show the Japan of that period in all its fascinating political and social aspects, in a sort of real historical reconstruction.
The only criticism that can perhaps be made of the film is that it contains too many clichés of the author in a sort of "catwalk" of his past works, with a slight similarity to Spirited Away. In this film there are really too many elements and sometimes you have the feeling that something has been cut to avoid lengthening the story in an exaggerated way. Certain behaviors of the author or situations seem a bit forced and to be able to grasp every aspect you cannot stop at just one viewing.
Although the worlds designed by Miyazaki are able to fascinate viewers beyond imagination, the core of the story is always the characters and their evolution. Mahito, from the initial trauma of losing his mother, will face, thanks to the help of the heron and the friends he will meet during the adventure, the so-called "hero's path" that will finally lead him to accept reality and his new family situation. The Boy and the Heron, perhaps Miyazaki's last work (although the tireless author has already declared that he is working on the next one), remains a film not to be missed, a milestone of an animation unfortunately destined to disappear.