Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Bird” is released in Russia. We explain why this is his most personal work Hayao Miyazaki’s cartoon “The Boy and the Bird” is released in Russia 12/05/2023, 18:11

There’s a cliché in film criticism: “His (or her) most personal film.” Clichés should be avoided, but they are like a broken clock; in the sense that they coincide with reality at least a few times. In such cases, as a rule, you have to make excuses and apologize, as now, and then again use the disgusting cliché.

So “The Boy and the Bird” is Hayao Miyazaki’s most personal film. Six years ago, when the film was just beginning production, Studio Ghibli president Toshio Suzuki stated that Miyazaki was making a film for his grandson, as if in memory of his grandfather, who did not have much time left. Suzuki’s words explain well the sense of sincerity that persists throughout the two hours of “The Boy and the Bird,” Miyazaki’s third feature film in the last 15 years: If “Ponyo on the Cliff” was for children and “The Wind Rises” was for adults, then new the painting was often made for a single viewer. Because we are here.

Now that the stamp party has started, let’s say this: In principle, we were incredibly lucky to live at the same time as Miyazaki, who was capable of shooting nothing but masterpieces. Your own exclusivity is felt doubly from the first second when the audience applauds the Ghibli screensaver. It’s not that this might be the director’s last film (of course, he lied once again about retiring and starting the next project, but he’s still 82). That is, the general public was allowed to see it: happiness was the privileged status of the Ghibli Park Museum, available only to its visitors, such as short films (the last of which, “Boro the Caterpillar,” was published by Miyazaki in 2018). But there was a full-fledged worldwide release. A different scenario would, of course, mean financial disaster and the death of the studio – it seems we have capitalism to thank for the opportunity for change here. Meanwhile, there were some surprises in this area: in Japan, they started to release the film without any pre-promotional campaign, just by releasing a poster; The result is phenomenal box office returns that could certainly be a game-changer in the industry.

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A frame from Hayao Miyazaki’s cartoon “The Boy and the Bird”

Studio Ghibli

Despite all its basic sincerity, The Boy and the Bird gives the impression of a great film by a great master. It’s either so beautiful (so much so that you’re moved to tears) or horrifying in its violent psychedelic nature (perhaps this is the strangest picture in Miyazaki’s filmography, in a good way) – which ultimately begs the question of where “Nostalgia” comes from. In the list of the director’s favorite films “Andrei Tarkovsky would definitely perish if such a thing suddenly happened. In terms of difficulty of perception, the film easily bypasses the previous film “The Wind Rises”, which tells about flights in a dream and in reality (and ten years later it received an entertaining rhyme as follows ) Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”). Here dream and reality quickly form an emulsion, and then, by a funny coincidence, the film becomes quite trendy in the sense of being attuned to the modern trend of multiverses, overlapping timelines, and meta-narratives (literally a grandpa who builds entire worlds where heroes travel ).

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A frame from Hayao Miyazaki’s cartoon “The Boy and the Bird”

Studio Ghibli

Here I advise you not to take children with you to the session, because they may get bored (a two-hour sleepwalking fantasy with a heron man, cannibal parrots and incessant metamorphoses will not be suitable for everyone) or difficult (after all, this is a coming-of-age novel about a child learning to cope with the terrible death of his Mother). . But after The Child and the Bird, the last thing I want to do is belittle children. This is to some extent a testament to the film, and its compiler Miyazaki, as before, looks with faith, hope and love at the young generation, which must be better than the previous one (not the main character of the film, whose personal tragedy, which coincides with the period of the Second World War, is associated with universal humanity). Faith, hope and love no longer appeal to the generation of children but to the generation of grandchildren, which brings us to a sad thought: children have failed. Well, there is nothing to be done. The wind is getting stronger, which means trying to live.