Movie review: 'Boy and the Heron' is standard Miyazaki fare

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- The Boy and the Heron, which screened its Japanese language version at the Animation Is Film Festival in Los Angeles, feels like writer/director Hayao Miyazaki playing the hits. With his 12th feature film since 1979 and an animator since 1963, Miyazaki is entitled to do that.

Mahito's (Soma Santoki) mother dies in a fire in WWII. So Mahito's father, Shoichi (Takuya Kimura) moves them out of Tokyo.

Mahito's aunt, Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura), marries Shoichi and Natsuko soon becomes pregnant. While struggling to adjust to a new town and new school, Mahito is also harassed by a heron.

The heron really surprises Mahito when it talks (Masaki Suda) and reveals a more human looking imp living inside it. The heron promises to reunite Mahito with his mother.

Without spoiling it, the version of Mahito's mother the heron presents is surreal. This leads Mahito into a fantasy world that is more akin to Miyazaki's other work.

The realms to which the heron takes Mahito include simply shaped, round adorable creatures with tiny eyes, the Warawara. There are more talking birds, some of a more warring nature but absurd with their squawking.

Mahito meets other humans with magical powers. The rules of time and space shift as Miyazaki sees fit.

These visuals and metaphysical concepts are consistent with the likes of Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky. Miyazaki still exercises his creative imagination, but there's no mistaking Boy and the Heron came from the same mind.

Miyazaki described The Boy and the Heron as his most personal film, so the levels to which the metaphors of Mahito's journey resonates may be more specific to viewers who may have lived through WWII, especially on the Japanese side.

For any viewer though, the loss of a parent and the trials of growing up can be explored through fantasy. Far lesser movies have done so, but far better ones have made the metaphor more clear while still leaving some aspects open to interpretation.

Miyazaki often deals with children maturing through fantasy adventures. On the Hollywood side, there's The Wizard of Oz, Labyrinth or The Neverending Story. The Boy and the Heron can't be summed up with a line like "there's no place like home" but it's a journey.

The most unfortunate aspect of The Boy and the Heron is the portrayal of the heron man with a bulbous nose resembling anti-Semitic portrayals of Jewish people. Hopefully, this is an accident and perhaps the Japanese imbue noses with different, more positive meanings.

But, the chance that it was not an accident, as the heron man is presented as a shady character, casts a troubling pall over the more fanciful scenes. Considering it's a World War II story that gets very dangerous.

If the least The Boy and the Heron does is add more Miyazaki creatures to his oeuvre, that's not a bad way to spend two hours. It may mean more to others or it may just be a curtain call on Miyazaki's 60 year animation career.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.