Maybe Boy and the Heron was meant to signal the final chapter in Hayao Miyazaki’s filmmaking career, though time has a stubborn way of rewriting endings. The celebrated Japanese master declared retirement multiple times, with the most recent goodbye framed after the premiere of The Wind Rises in 2013. Yet this new feature marks his return to directing after a decade away, bearing the texture of a carefully kept inventory and a reflective testament. It seems Miyazaki uses the film to contemplate cinema itself, the weight of his artistic legacy, and what might follow in his creative journey.
Selected as the opening title for the 71st San Sebastián Festival and honored with a Donostia Award to celebrate a four-decade career, Miyazaki has long stood as a central figure in both animated cinema and the broader history of film. His enduring influence rests on beloved works like My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Porco Rosso (1992), alongside the films already mentioned. The new feature weaves a narrative about cinema itself titled The Boy and the Heron, centering on a boy who loses his mother in a World War II fire and then encounters a quiet, rural world that becomes a portal to a strange, dreamlike dimension. A mysterious creature, its humanoid head peeking from the beak of a heron, draws the boy into an adventure where the living mingle with the dead in a parallel realm. The story is a metaphor for mourning and memory, inviting the audience to follow a journey through loss toward a landscape where time, imagination, and emotion fuse into one experience. The tale brings a pirate navigating seas of dreams, whimsical creatures that puff and float like balloons, and a surreal confrontation with giant lovebirds with fascist overtones, all threaded through by a playful yet piercing sensibility that echoes Miyazaki’s longtime preoccupations with power, wonder, and humanity. A self-aware touch places a time lord at the center, a playful nod to the director’s own influence over the universe within his films.
In many respects The Boy and the Heron unfolds as an alternate reality that fascinates and unsettles in equal measure. The premise revisits familiar motifs from Miyazaki’s earlier work, while inviting new interpretations of the imagery that animated his career. As with much of his cinema, the visuals seem to surge from a force beyond mere brush and pen, a sense of life appearing on screen by an almost magical intervention. Some moments in the plot feel deliberately tangled, and the pacing can dip before charging into a vivid, energetic third act. Yet the film remains a coherent story—a meditation on impermanence, on the people we love, and on the creator’s own evolving sense of life and art. It is a comforting, melancholic reflection that resonates with audiences who have followed Miyazaki through decades of cinematic evolution, offering a delicate balance between sorrow and wonder.
Now aged eighty-two, Miyazaki has suggested that his days of making films may be winding toward a natural close. He has signaled that even if utopian ideals—such as ending wars and restoring harmony between humanity and nature—continue to inspire his work, they may not be fully realized within any single lifetime. Studio Ghibli, the studio he founded and led for years, faces the challenge of finding new leadership while carrying forward a legacy that many generations will study and celebrate. Should The Boy and the Heron prove to be his final work, it would stand as a bold and triumphant farewell captured in motion and memory. The journey he invites audiences to take is not merely a goodbye but a testament to the enduring power of imagination to shape how we see the world and ourselves.