This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
Mahito is a young boy whose mother is killed in a hospital fire during WWII, after which his father evacuates him to the countryside where he is to live with his father's new wife - his mother's sister, the pregnant Natsuko. In the lush grounds of the old family estate Mahito discovers a mysterious ruined tower, said to have been built by a recent ancestor, and is harried by a grey heron who tells him his mother is alive and can be found.
All this leads to Mahito entering a dream-like world of shifting realities and weird creatures - swarms of aggressive pelicans, the cute, inflating Warawara, the militaristic and culinary parakeets, and the mysterious fire-girl, Lady Himi.
For much of the time the purpose of the characters and the world is unclear, leading to quite a bit of plot disorientation which probably reflects Mahito's state of mind quite well. There are no rules in this fantasy realm, and as soon as you think you've found your feet and direction, the floor falls away and a new scene takes its place.
It's incredibly rich, both visually and in ideas. Sometimes these will recall previous Miyazaki works - the tower with the bath house of Spirited Away, the little paper cut-outs from the same film, the Warawara beings with Princess Mononoke's Kodama spirits, the partnership of Mahito and Kimi with that of Pazu and Sheeta from Castle in the Sky, the depressed, melting Howl with the fake mother apparition, to name a few. But it doesn't rest on past glories, it's a unique, beautiful and very personal piece of work.
The animation, as you'd expect, is masterful. It's the time taken with the little details - the way a character balances before moving, the way a texture reacts to touch, a billowing in the wind. The sounds too add a whole dimension to the film - footsteps on a polished wooden floor, the age-old click of a door handle, the whiz of an arrow. Alongside Joe Haishi's wonderful score, it all builds up to a veritable feast for the senses.
Where does The Boy and the Heron sit alongside Miyazaki's classics? It's hard to tell at the moment and I definitely need to give it another watch to take more in. I immediately enjoyed it more than his previous film, The Wind Rises, but it's hard to dislodge long-time favourites such as Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, etc, even if it's just on grounds of accessibility (I saw it with my two children, 12 and 10, and they enjoyed it but were, I think, somewhat bemused).
Spirited Away remains, for me, Miyazaki's masterpiece, and while Heron doesn't touch that, it has Miyazaki's quality, his heart, his magic, and comfortably sits alongside his other greats, which pretty much every one of his films has been.
