Film fans were delighted when legendary director Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement to announce his first film in a decade, The Boy and the Heron.
Studio Ghibli, the renowned Japanese animation studio, was founded in 1985 by Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki and is known for beautiful animes such as My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away and the latest continues to live up to expectations.
The Boy and the Heron is set in Japan during the Second World War, when a boy called Mahito (Luca Padovan) loses his mother in a hospital fire.
Moving to the countryside to start a new life with his father (Christian Bale) and his aunt (Gemma Chan), he encounters a talking Grey Heron (Robert Pattinson).
It’s not long before Mahito embarks on a great adventure, with the heron as his guide, as they encounter a whole host of enchanted characters voiced by the likes of Mark Hamill, Florence Pugh, Willem Dafoe and Dave Bautista.
Upon its release, rumours started to fly that this would be Miyazaki’s final film. However, throughout his career, his retirement has been frequently announced, only for him to change his mind. In fact, the director is already working on his next project at 83, having won his second Best Animated Feature Oscar for The Boy and the Heron.
The film received critical acclaim upon release, with 97 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. The Guardian’s Radhaven Simonpillai wonders if the possibility of each animation being his final film is a play on the “grief and afterlife” he explores. The journalist notes: “He’s a film-maker that has been both haunted and at peace with such thoughts throughout his whole career.”
Meanwhile, Forbes’ Eric Kane exclaimed it was “an instant classic”, describing the movie as a “masterful work of gorgeous animation, powerful storytelling and absolutely bizarre magic and adventure.”
The Boy and the Heron is now streaming on Netflix.
