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The Boy and the Heron Movie Review

The Boy and the Heron is a 2023 fantasy anime film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It’s not one of his best efforts, but it’s definitely an admirable achievement in spite of its apparent flaws.

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“I’ll be your guide“

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In the wake of his mother’s death and his father’s remarriage, a headstrong boy named Mahito ventures into a dreamlike world shared by both the living and the dead. A boy entering a magical world with its own crazy set of rules and experiencing growth made for a setup that is quite similar to the one in ‘Spirited Away’ and certainly this was the film where Miyazaki tried the most to reach the artistic and cinematic levels of that masterpiece. He fell short of reaching it on multiple grounds, but sporadically and in certain areas he did strike gold with it.

This was obviously a very personal film for the filmmaker, one that deals with grief over a mother’s death as well as grappling with your own mortality and with the world’s cruelty juxtaposing its infinite beauty. These themes were present in many of his previous projects too, but this is where he explored them a bit more extensively. The story’s grounded first half stood in stark contrast to the magical and otherworldly second half. Both had their merits, though the ending left me frustrated.

Yes, the ending signified all of my issues with The Boy and the Heron quite transparently – it has a screenplay that is quite underwritten and rushed. That final sequence, though obviously quite beautiful, did not leave more of an emotional impact on me due to it feeling so abrupt. The entire movie left me in the cold a bit due to having problematic pacing (this story needed more than two hours to be properly told) and introducing way too many characters for its own sake, thus leaving many of them underdeveloped.

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The voice acting is uniformly strong and the characterization of the main players is excellent. Mahito is a solid protagonist and his arc is so heartfelt. Natsuko is also very well realized and I quite liked the relationship between the two. The older grannies with big noses have become familiar archetypes for the director by now, but they were still very endearing and fun. Those are the highlights when it comes to the characters with everybody else feeling underutilized.

Well, if you don’t count the titular heron that is! Wow, was this character a revelation or what. The twist about the true nature of this heron worked for me and it made the character so interesting. The mysterious and ultimately goofy dynamic that develops between the two characters was the heart of the film and the rare source of humor in a movie that is mostly devoid of it – it’s very dark, serious and contemplative throughout.

Above all else, this character was superbly animated. At first, I was genuinely creped out by this heron as he looked genuinely menacing. All of the creatures in the film were gorgeously animated as the movie featured some of the best and most unique character designs in an animated film in years. The film, thus, achieved glorious results in the area of world building. Yes, it’s a rushed movie that needed more time to cook in the oven, but we still got to see a mostly well realized world and some imagery that was so strikingly gorgeous that it made for some of the most artistically inclined animated films in this decade.

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The Boy and the Heron has stunning animation and it’s worth seeing for those breathtaking visuals alone. But it also has a phenomenal, deeply moving and elegant score by Joe Hisaishi. The Academy snubbing his incredible work was truly shameful. The dialogue is excellent, the themes mature and the world very intriguing. The darkness is evident here and there is also that healthy dose of grossness in fluids and creatures that defines Miyazaki’s works. It’s a wonderful world and a very strong story, but one that really was rushed. I do feel that it would benefit most from repeat viewings.