The Boy and the Heron Review

Miyazaki came out of retirement to make a film about a boy whose mother burns to death and who is dragged, by a talking heron, into a tower held together by an old man looking for an heir. It is his most personal work and his least explained. The animation is hand drawn at a level nobody else is attempting now, from the crowd of parakeets to the way fire moves through a city, and the images stay with a viewer whether or not they resolve.

The consensus reads the film as a farewell, an old artist looking at what he built, asking who will carry it, and concluding that nobody will and that this is survivable. The middle wanders and the dream logic locks some viewers out, which the film accepts as the cost of its method. Mahito is a closed, difficult child rather than an easy one. It swept the major awards for animation and deserved them. It is the last great film of a career made of them.