Boy? Or Heron? (CREDIT: GKIDS)
Starring: Japanese Cast: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Aimyon, Yoshina Kimura, Takuya Kimura, Shōhei Hino, Ko Shibasaki, Kaoru Kobayashi, Jun Kunimura
English Dubbed Cast: Luca Padovan, Robert Pattinson, Karen Fukuhara, Gemma Chan, Christian Bale, Mark Hamill, Florence Pugh, Willem Dafoe, Dave Bautista
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Running Time: 124 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 for Lethal Flames and Freaky-Looking Talking Animals
Release Date: December 8, 2023 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: During the middle of World War II, 12-year-old Mahito’s mother Hisako dies in a hospital fire. One year later, his widowed father Shoichi remarries Hisako’s younger sister, Natsuko, and they all move from Tokyo to the countryside. Everyone at the estate is eager to lavish attention on Mahito, including the gaggle of maids, as well as a strange, persistent grey heron. Soon enough, that bird leads Mahiko into an alternate world where parakeets are the size of humans and Mahito’s missing granduncle is a wizard keeping existence in perfect balance. As the boy and the heron make their way through this parallel plane, the entire fate of his family might just rest upon the success of their journey.
What Made an Impression?: A Thin Line Between Reality and Fantasy: If you had no idea before reading this review that The Boy and the Heron was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, chances are you would’ve figured it out immediately upon reading that synopsis. In his decades-long career of helming animated classics like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Ponyo, Miyazsaki has tapped into eternal childlike wonder by having fantastical realms spring up within the confines of real world settings. Mahito’s trip into the alternate reality is so gradual that it almost feels like this sort of thing could happen to anybody who’s watching. It certainly helps that his situation always remains tethered to his starting point. That’s the sort of magic that Miyazaki is famous for, and it’s just as potent as it’s always been.
Seeking Harmony: Mahito’s world is in flux in pretty much every imaginable way on both grand and intimate scales. He’s been displaced by war, he’s lost a parent, and now animals are talking to him! No wonder the ultimate message of The Boy and the Heron is about putting everything back in balance. Mahito’s granduncle faces a mighty foe in this struggle in the form of the king of the parakeets, which feels a bit like avian slander, but in the context of the story, it works appropriately enough. Anyway, by the end of the movie, it’s kind of questionable whether or not full balance has actually been maintained. But perhaps that’s because the story is not really over. Mahito will be an adult soon enough, and this is exactly the sort of formative experience he could use to make sure that he grows up to be a valuable citizen of the world.
Subs vs. Dubs: And finally, I’ll offer a note about whether you should seek out the subtitled or dubbed version of The Boy and the Heron. I saw the former, which I generally prefer when it comes to foreign-language films, because I like to hear the native tongue, and I usually have the captions on anyway even when I’m watching something in English. But in this case I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to see the dubbed version, because the English voice cast looks so promising. I’ll probably have to check it out eventually just so that I can hear Dave Bautista as the Parakeet King. If you have a choice between one or the other, I think you’ll be fine either way. And if you have the time and the inclination, then go ahead and give both versions a whirl!
The Boy and the Heron is Recommended If You Like: Miyazaki in general, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Aflac Duck
Grade: 4 out of 5 Parakeets
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