THE BOY AND THE HERON / KIMITACHI WA DÔ IKIRU KA (2023)

At 80+, anime legend Hayao Miyazaki is hardly the first master artist to unretire once too often.  He even called himself out in advance: ‘There’s nothing more pathetic than telling the world you’ll retire because of your age, then making yet another comeback.  Is it truly possible to accept how pathetic that is, and do it anyway?’  Well, credit Miyazaki on honesty.  Or something near it since this new film proves that in his case the spirit is weak while the flesh is willing.  Ready, willing & able as HERON proves technically fresh, even thrilling.  Especially in kinetic set pieces of fire & destruction during WWII firebombing, and in just about anything seen dashing across the screen.  (Innovative backwash motion behind the fore-figures jarring in a good way.)  It’s the memory & imaginative aspects that pall in this Japanese post-war story as ‘the boy’ deals with the loss of his mother and the replacement wife his father plans to marry that confuse, smothered under fantastic beasts (‘the heron’ and others), a time tunnel and an overstuffed narrative.  Also a wise old conjuror worried no one will continue his meta-physical labors to keep the world safe.  (Who might that old man be?)  The dreamworld, which takes up most of the film, not only an æsthetic mess, but revealing of how Miyazaki often overloads his plate (and pallette), it’s his Achilles’s heel.  Oh for the days of restraint and repose shown in past glories like TOTORO/’88 and PORCO ROSSO/’92.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/porco-rosso-1992.html)  An aspect of his best work perfectly recaptured in his previous swansong THE WIND RISES/’13.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/12/kaze-tachinu-wind-rises-2013.html)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  While hardly fixing the problems, the film is better in Japanese than in its English dub.  If you’re too young to handle subtitles, you’re probably too young for the film.

DOUBLE-BILL:  BORO THE CATERPILLAR/’18; a presumptive suggestion as this late Miyazaki short (not seen here) only shows at the Ghibli Museum in Japan.