REVIEW: 君たちはどう生きるか [The Boy and the Heron] [2023]

Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 124 minutes
Release Date: July 14th, 2023 / November 22nd, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Studio Ghibli / Toho / GKIDS
Director(s): Hayao Miyazaki
Writer(s): Hayao Miyazaki / Hayao Miyazaki (story)

You and I aren’t friends or allies, kid.

As death and destruction rain down upon Tokyo as a result of the Pacific War, Mahito Maki (Soma Santoki) is left struggling to find reason in the world. A hospital fire caused by the fighting takes the life of his mother, pushing his father (Takuya Kimura’s Shoichi) to move them to the countryside where his new fighter plane component factory has just opened a few years later. This new home is also where Mahito’s mother grew up … as well as where Mahito’s future stepmother—her younger sister Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura)—still resides.

Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron is a semi-autobiographical fantasy adventure that mirrors the auteur’s own childhood feelings (and, presumably, his current ones on the potential cusp of retirement … again). It’s about escaping tragedy through one’s imagination and how the process of doing so can be both a powerful tool with which to move forward and a crutch with which to lose yourself even further. Because Mahito isn’t the first of his bloodline to be drawn towards a magical tower overgrown by forest. He might, however, be the last.

Accompanied by a gray heron (Masaki Suda voices the bird and the man who seemingly lives inside him—a character I will admit I still don’t fully understand since the film effortlessly cuts between him being friend and foe without any true motives or reasons for the shifts beyond what the plot demands), Mahito’s selfish curiosity is buoyed by the fact he’s also seen Natsuko disappear into the woods too. So, he sets out to find her, call the heron’s bluff that his mother might still be alive, and distract himself from his harsh and complicated reality.

What he finds is magical and absurd. A universe occupied by man-eating pelicans and giant parakeets presumably created by the so-called “Tower Master” (Shohei Hino). There’s also tiny blobs called Wara Wara who must feed on the few fish populating the water to blow-up like balloons and be reborn in the real world if the birds don’t consume them first. Enter living humans amongst the dead to help keep this ecosystem sustainable—humans that bear a striking resemblance to those Mahito already knows, albeit much younger and seemingly trapped beyond time.

How everything works together proves a lot as Miyazaki goes wild with his characters and sets to deliver visually stunning sequences that are just as perplexing narratively. Think of this tower as a “Wonderland” that morphs and distorts reality to be simultaneously scarier and safer than the conflict and emotions our young protagonist simply doesn’t have the means to process or reconcile on his own. It’s a sort of “Oz” in that way too considering others have traveled here before him to learn and evolve themselves before returning to life.

As such, it’s as much about young Mahito coming-of-age and accepting tragedy and discomfort as an unavoidable part of life that shouldn’t prevent him from embracing the good that also exists (regardless of how it might feel like a consolation prize or replacement for that which he’d rather have) as it is the “Tower Master” coming to grips with the fact that his utopian escape has gradually become just as violent and chaotic as the world he left. Does that mean his work was meaningless? Not necessarily. He just might have accomplished more trying to make reality better.

So, there’s a message for folks of all ages here. A paradise turned nightmare with some really jarring imagery that drives home the fact we cannot eradicate hardship simply by willing it. Because even if you do for yourself, that peace comes via the sacrifice of others. Someone must arrive to kill for those who can’t so they can survive. Someone must appear to protect another food source so that those consuming it don’t deplete it to the point of triggering their own extinction too. Maturity at any age is realizing conflict isn’t the problem. It’s our response to it.