Warning: Mild spoilers ahead
Venerable director Hayao Miyazaki's latest opus, The Boy and the Heron, premiered last year with hardly any promotion save for a lone poster image. Early audiences only had Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's name and reputation to bank on and the risk paid off as the film had been a commercial success not just in Japan but in other markets, like in the US.
Aiming to see it like how the first audiences did, I deliberately avoided watching trailers, reading synopses or reviews and only allowed myself to see the latter posters that were eventually released. Resisting to view stills and clips that ended up online especially on social media took some resolve on my part.
The Boy and the Heron, set during World War II, begins with Mahito, a 12 year old boy, getting awakened by an air raid and then learning that the hospital where his mother was confined in was burning beyond salvation.
A year after the tragic death of his mother, Mahito and his father relocates to a rural town where he is introduced to his new wife, Natsuko, who is actually the younger sister of his mother. Mahito struggles to fit in with his new surroundings and still gets tormented by nightmares of that night when his mother died.
All the while, a gray heron insistently taunts Mahito and lures him to an abandoned and mysterious tower. The combination of a self inflicted wound, the disappearance of Natsuko, and the heron's cryptic message that his mother is still alive compels Mahito to throw caution to the wind and actually go inside and explore the tower.
What follows is a psychedelic trip, that for viewers of Miyazaki's previous films, feels like being back in a recurring dream, so strange and yet a tinge of the familiar.
Possibly owing to avoiding anything about the film prior to seeing it, this initial journey to this other realm, inhabited by fantastic brings like the man-eating anthropomorphic parakeets and the marshmallow like warawara that eventually get born into human beings, barely scratches the surface.
Reading some articles after watching and learning that The Boy and the Heron had some autobiographical elements offered new insights to the film. When viewing the enigmatic creator of the realm, actually Mahito's granduncle who disappeared upon entering the tower, as a representation of Miyazaki himself sheds a new light to the story especially since the granduncle bequeaths the realm to Mahito for him to rebuild and rule according to his fancy.
All these new discoveries and peeled layers just warrants additional viewings of the film. And The Boy and the Heron, just like other Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films, is poised to be a movie to be watched time and time again.
Be transported back to inside the tower with the original score by Joe Hisaishi.
Listen also to the theme song Spinning Globe by Kenshi Yonezu.
The Boy and the Heron, distributed locally by Encore Films Philippines, is currently showing in cinemas nationwide.
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