2023-10-30 08:32:04
Ten years separate the premiere of The Boy and the Heron (of which we were able to give a good account in the last edition of the Sitges Festivalwhere he participated as a special session within the Fantàstic Official Section, out of competition) with respect to The Wind Risesthe previous work of Hayao Miyazaki and which, according to the master of animation, was going to be his farewell to cinema. Nor does it seem that this new film is going to be his swan song, since, health permitting, he is already working on another project.
After the registry change that entailed The Wind Risesa biography of the Japanese aeronautical engineer Jirō Horikoshiwhere Miyazaki He displayed all his passion for aeronautics and the Second World War, The Boy and the Heron represents a return to its usual territory, fantasy, with overflowing imagery, full of color, shapes and sounds that transport the viewer, along with its protagonist, to an alternative reality where magic, mythological beings and different rules of physics they govern.
Throughout his career, there are several themes that have threaded the stories of Miyazaki. From the reconstruction of Japan after the war, the dependent and distant relationship between parents, the defense of the environment and the denunciation of the atrocities that modern society has caused, the loss of codes of honor and civility or the fascination with female characters Empowered, Miyazaki has used all these elements to create his own universe. Added to this is her own bestiary, her sense of fantasy, with anthropomorphic animals and ancestral creatures inherited from the mythology of her country.
The filmmaker has always drawn from a national cultural legacy, but also from European influence. As already happened with Spirited Away, The Boy and the Heron is once again a very personal rereading of the work of Lewis Carroll. If the first was his interpretation of Alice in Wonderlandthe second is closer to Through the Looking Glasswithout forgetting other examples, such as the influence of The little Mermaid in Ponyo on the Cliff.
The master of Japanese animation Hayao Miyazaki answers the call of his followers with ‘The Boy and the Heron’.
Like his other films, The Boy and the Heron It is born from the artist’s irrepressible need to make this story emerge from within him. Miyazaki He began working on it personally, before presenting the project to his animation studio, Ghibli Studios, and obtaining the approval of his usual producer, Toshio Suzuki. The story of Mahito Maki, that teenager who is torn between the pain of the loss of his mother and the incomprehension of his father’s new marriage, and which leads him to discover a parallel reality that has marked his family’s legacy, although fiction, has autobiographical components, of reflection by an artist who faces his last stage of life and who takes stock of his heritage.
Ten years separate this film from its predecessor, of which seven have been dedicated to its production. A margin greater than the four years that used to set the tone of his previous filmography. Seven years marked by the age of the filmmaker, but also by a pandemic that stopped the production of the film.
This weekend the film finally arrived in theaters after its applauded presentation at international festivals such as Toronto, Saint Sebastian o Sitges. The time has come to enjoy the new masterpiece of Hayao Miyazaki.
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