Let’s be direct and without much nonsense: Miyazaki’s work, poetic on a visual level and loaded with symbolism, is a legacy, a set in itself. And each piece, without forgetting its independence, is part of his very personal art. The boy and the heron His most recent film turns out to be one of his most emblematic and intimate works.
Despite having the 1937 novel as its premise How they live? by Genzaburo Yoshino, Miyazaki delivers a work with biographical overtones, thus, in that tone and where the metaphorical replaces the protagonist. The poetic, visual, narrative charge is present in each frame of the film.
Released in Japan with a minimum of publicity, contradicting the standards of the mainstream industry in crisis that dazzles the consumer world with advertisements for future super-heroic failures, the animated film unites the complex visual and referential imagination of the artist, founder of Ghibli Studios in the eighties.
The boy and the heron He leaves his audience moved and does so without stridency. He does not need it. Each painting is loaded with cultural references and sensations. Talking about metaphors and poetry is pleonasm but in the case of Miyazaki license is allowed.
On the other hand, it is time for recounts as a good era of long post-modernism and the great artists who set trends, tastes, sensibilities and industry, are sincere in their drives as if the time had come to begin an epilogue before their audience. Spielberg did it with The Fabelmans this year and there were licenses but no subtleties. Miyazaki does it from a dreamlike, cultural, metaphorical perspective. Matter of origin then.
Despite this, Miyazaki is not exempt from belonging, without having given way in his extensive work, to having a global reach. A film geek (he was dying to use that adjective) enjoys and analyzes it just as much as a popcorn consumer. Her films are in many ways global phenomena and are not isolated from popular taste either. Because The boy and the heronIt even works and very well, like a coming of age.
During the Pacific War – this is what the official synopsis announces and it is a cultural issue –, Mahito, 12 years old, loses his mother in a fire. Her father is dedicated to manufacturing air ammunition and they have a comfortable position. The boy is a little arrogant but loving towards his father.
After some time and without overcoming the pain, Mahito finds out that his father will marry his mother’s younger sister who is expecting a child and turns out to be loving. The young man resists the new position he has because they also now live in a villa that is near the factory. In the midst of a melancholy that he half pretends not to have with a load of arrogance, a heron appears to him and harasses him like a conscience to take him to an abandoned castle. This will be the premise of a plot about honor, maturity and bravery. In addition to pain and grief.
The boy and the heron It is a story with classic overtones and rich metaphors. A visual and sensory delight. A legacy of a global artist who has never made concessions to a lost global industry.
Unmissable these days. By the way, both versions, original language and Spanish, are very worthwhile. The work of Emilio Treviño stands out as Mahito and Alfonso Herrera as a heron.
The best in this new year. May 2024 be a time of happiness and joy. Congratulations!