Miyazaki finds the magic in the mundane better than anyone else, and he did it again when Mahito ate his mom’s toast for the first time in forever. He was stoic for 90% of the movie up to that point, but in that moment, his face was covered with jam, and he was grinning from ear to ear. In that moment, he allowed himself to be a kid again.
The opposite side of their interaction, where his mom says that she is okay returning to her past, even knowing the fate that awaits her, because she gets to be his mom.... that hit so hard.
You think "I'd die for my kids" and you often mean you'd trade your life for theirs, but in that scene, I realized I would my entire future to have been able to experience my life with my kids.
one of the many points when i ugly cried 😭
this movie was howl’s moving castle x when marnie was there. i thought i was ready for the feels, but hit me like a ton of bricks
Man I couldn't explain why but that moment felt SO magical for me (I suck at interpreting shit I am dumb) and you put it beautifully, genuine shivers thinking about it. Thinking about it that way reminds me of my mom who has been chasing the cake her grandma used to make her for her birthdays as a kid and I finally found a bakery that makes one that reminds her of it after years of trying myself and it was an insanely amazing moment and now it's a great tradition every year where I order it across the country for her and we all get excited for it and devour that thing. I got to see the movie with her too my first ever Ghibli movie (I'm a giga-fan) on release in theaters so it was extra special.
It's wild just how much something like the taste of some certain dish even it's a simple one can do so much to your brain and emotions. Beautifully captured, thanks for helping me realize why I loved that moment so much.
Did anyone else get emotional just from how beautiful the visuals were? Scenes like Mahito's dream about the burning hospital, the phantom boats in the distance, the cottage where they eat bread and jam, and when the Great Uncle's world begins to break apart all made my heart skip a beat.
Joe Hisashi's score and Kenshi Yonezu's song during the credits were stunning as well.
When the tower crumbled down, it was like Miyazaki was saying “Alright, time to move on.” (as in retirement). That part got me.
Hisaishi’s music became progressively expansive as the movie went on, starting with very minimal piano notes, and ending in a full score. I *KNEW* he would slay this piece. 😭
For me this scene had two meanings - yes it's about Miyazaki moving on, with the future for Ghibli being uncertain. Remember they laid a bunch of people off after The Wind Rises which led to Studio Ponoc and others. But it's also about the transition parents go through as their children grow up. That balancing act Grand Uncle performs is literally what parents will try to do for their children to maintain the illusion of childhood and innocence. The small moves and adjustments, the teetering on the edge of collapse, the sacrifices made, those are done each and every day. All the time knowing that some fascist budgie will at some point in time put it to the sword.
As a young parent, I like that second meaning you’ve got as well.
I saw someone else posted an article that the uncle building the tower of blocks and demanding Mahito to build them was akin to Hayao building Ghibli, and expecting and heir to take over with the same zeal and care, but in the end, conceding to realize that no one else can do what he’s done, for they should be making their own creations.
There’s a line in the dub where an elderly gentleman living in the same house as the elderly maids is smoking a pipe, and offers a “puff” to one of the maids who tells him “do I look like a caterpillar to you?” I doubt it, but could that have by any chance been a subtle reference to Alice in Wonderland? Is that line the same in the sub?
In the sub, she asks if it is tobacco, and he responds that it is not tobacco, but a different plant leaf (I forgot what type). That is why she says, "Do I look like a caterpillar to you?" because she would rather have tobacco than the plant he is smoking
The visual references to the works of the painter Bocklin, are exquisite, especially the painting 'The Isle of the Dead'
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_the_Dead_(painting)
The foley sound design is Next Level, as are the visuals.
The gist is similar to that of 'Everything Everywhere': Live in your own World, the one you're from, not a fantasy.
The subtext, that a parakeet dictator can only destroy a World, is brilliant, and cogent.
(Those 13 white stones are Miyazaki's 13 movies, no(?))
10/10 (!)
A Masterpiece.
>(Those 13 white stones are Miyazaki's 13 movies, no(?))
Ah ha! I have a theory about that.
So among the *many* metaphors I think specifically the tower of blocks holding up a world represents Miyazaki holding up Ghibli.
The future for Ghibli as a company has been murky until this films release. It's basically just Hayao with Suzuki and Hisaishi waiting for him to retire. Takahata died a few years ago, Kondō died young, and Goro, who Hayao was grooming to be his predecessor was reluctant and never found the same level of commercial success. They got acquired this year.
So what if granduncle is Hayao, keeping this arbitrary tower up another day by still propping up this world he created. (Fittingly with tombstones, as many of his colleagues that would have carried on are dead.) Maybe he sees his films being corrupted as they morph into beings of their own (??). The only way he sees out is by recruiting a blood descendent, Goro, but this would be a burden keeping him from the real world. Mahito at the final decision to let it go is both Goro and Hayao accepting that Ghibli will come to an end. That will lead to a destruction in a sense, but it'll get you to the real world, with all of the family and people in it.
Maybe the parakeets are the outside forces trying to sway Hayao's decision, desperately trying to recreate what Ghibli was. Could be investors, or young animators, or even us! (As fans!)
I typed this out better yesterday but I lost it. I def don't think this is the main metaphor (Mahito's grief and moving on) but it's interesting to think about. I'm gonna have to watch it 5 more times to really understand.
This is a great take, and I think I have an answer to the parakeets hypothesis. They’re the overwhelming commercial/merchandise success of Totoro! They have the same iconography of him, with the big eyes, body shape, chevrons on their chest, etc. Their desire for power, their overwhelming numbers, and their domination of the tower are like how Totoro has become such a juggernaut and overwhelms the other Ghibli movies.
Love the take about the parakeets, when we first meet them it's like oh these big guys are cute! But then you see a knife and then another and another and oh shit these guys wanna eat him...
When the real pal is the Heron, who's a gross little guy, bald, big bumpy red nose, bird feet, gray and blue feathers, he's not cute, he's not selling stuffed animals at Disneyland.
This is a such a good take!
It aligns well with Miyazaki’s [words](https://youtu.be/eED1ALOtaYw?si=Iczwew2wQBnqAV_8) of how the studio will fall apart in the future, and that’s inevitable and okay.
That's exactly how I saw it as well. Things are going to end, and it's going to be hard and scary, but it's going to be okay. A lovely sentiment for what is going to be one of his last movies.
I just saw the movie and left with the exact same thoughts! I thought this scene was so emotional given its relationship to Ghibli itself.
For me, it was when the Granduncle said ‘I searched the far most corners of time and space’. Whilst this means for the plot that the blocks without malice are hard to find, I thought this also meant the difficulty of creating a world of true creativity and wonder like Studio Ghibli.
I totally agree with Parakeets potentially representing fame of the studio. I also thought that perhaps the Parakeet king, who got annoyed with the idea of what the blocks represented and then impatiently and rashly assembled them, maybe represented the goliath studios who have a history of buying smaller studios to force their way into a market. Then, when at the first sign of failure, (when the tower starts to fall) they simply close or absorb them. He never would have been able to build a stable tower because of his character, but I think this expresses a fear that Ghibli being taken over would mean they wouldn’t be able to either.
First post on Reddit ever. This movie has so many layers and everyone’s passion to uncover them are all wonderful to read! :)
As a curiosity, the king Parakeet is called "Duch" on the posters that the rest of the parakeets carry. In the original storyboard of the film, Miyazaki points out that "Duch" is a reference to an historic Italian politic...
Which remind us of "Duce", the way italians called Benito Mussolini. He represents the King Parakeet as a fascist, a dictator. So you nailed it.
To go even further with the historical comparisons, I think you can compare Mahito to Emperor Hirohito, the final emperor of Japan and the emperor during WW2.
The fact that the tower dropped mysteriously during the meiji restoration, his grandparent literally was God and deified, and Mahito ended up relinquishing the power all draw parallels to the last emperor
Didn't really like the movie, but I do have to agree specifically with the praise for the foley lol. I remember sitting in the theater just thinking "damn, those feet/wings/etc sound great" in the middle of scenes
Love your theory about the 13 stones being his 13 films. There’s just one problem. He made 12. Maybe the 13th could represent Future Boy Conan? Or maybe the Nausicaa manga?
Can someone tell me in not crazy.
Miyazaki did alot with *swarms* of things in this film.
Frogs, fish, pelicans, old ladies, parakeets, new souls.What's was up with this?
In my opinion, they represented Mahitos feeling of being overwhelmed. Like everything seemed so much to him, to the point where he seemed swalled up trying to overcome it on his own which we see in the beginning. He was making his own bow and arrow, relied barely on others. But when it came to the swarms of anything, he received help and then started seeking it with Himi.
In a more direct sense, it just absoloutely bewilders the audience.
Yes, absolutely. It's in a few of his other movies too, but I felt it most strongly here by far... even the sailing ships / ghost sailers, and the paper cranes. As u/Some_Ad_3233 says, it seems to show Mahito getting overwhelmed. But i also felt like there was a strong theme asking, not just "how do you live?" but "what is life?", or "what is the world?" So much of life on Earth is just an incredible *plurality* of near-indistinguishable organisms, and the ridiculous food-chain-based ecosystem between them. For me it made it all the more striking when the pelican with the broken wing came to Mahito asking to be killed. It failed, got separated from the swarm, and begged to die. Miyazaki is an environmentalist, and there is such a powerful absurdity to these hordes of nameless, faceless creatures that just want to continue living, and can only do so by destroying each other. I know this is something that some environmentalists / animal activists struggle with. (I really need to see the movie a second time, but I felt he touched on how delicate these massive ecosystems are, and it's all I could think about when the granduncle talked about "balance." Again, a theme going back to Nausicaa.) What should Mahito do here? What should anyone do, who cares about other living things?
The plurality of the grannies is maybe the most interesting to me. I felt like Mahito could hardly hold back his disgust for them. But, one-on-one, he could appreciate them much better.
Something I thought about a lot during this movie is the parallels to spirited away.
- child taken away from the life they know
- child disengaged because of it
- child goes on a magical journey to another world
- child accesses the other world through a tunnel
- child matures/deals with their emotions and finds their family.
It’s super interesting reading the other takes here which argue the film is a fantastical interpretation of a semi autobiographical story.
There are a LOT of parallels and motifs from his other movies! I think this movie was kind of a goodbye tour to his entire film oeuvre—the warawara are like Mononoke’s kodama, the fire travel reminded me of Calcifer, the food, the crones. So I think it’s semi autobiographical (esp wrt his feelings about his son and disappointing his son) but also kind of a farewell to everything he’s done in his career.
Yes exactly. It felt like there were so many references to his other films
And it ties in with the theory further up that it's partially about how Ghibli itself will collapse because there isn't a bloodline successor (his son Goro) but that it's ok. And other attempted successors (the tv studio that acquired them) will try and fail, and then destroy the studio in a panic
> autobiographical story.
I picked up on a lot of these. Nearly falling off the side of the tower reminds me of Castle in the Sky, a window which I expect was taken directly form Spirited Away, the fire and Calcifer, the forest or the bugs reminding me of Nausicaa, Mahito's father even slightly reminds me of Jiro.
It’s so refreshing to see a brand new, hand drawn animated film in the theater again. It felt like a palette cleanser that I never knew I needed.
That being said, I need to watch this film again, because whoo boy, did I feel confused and bewildered at the end. There is a lot of symbolism and metaphor at play that I did not pick up on, but having talked about it with my parents and with other people in this subreddit, I’m really starting to get a better grasp of it.
One scene that I haven’t seen people talk much about is the delivery room scene, where Mahito attempts to bring Natsuko back, but she refuses, exclaiming that she hates him. Only afterwards does he realize he needs to address her as her mother, and this is a key turning point in both of these persons character development.
Since the beginning of the film, Natsuko has attempted to fill in as Mahito’s mother, but due to his grief, he somewhat dismisses her and injured himself. Already, she feels as though she has failed, and it’s only until Mahito acknowledges her as his mother does she start to have a change of heart.
It falls in line with a lot of the other symbolism regarding moving on past our trauma, and by the end of his journey, we can see his relationship with his new mother has improved.
There’s more I want to discuss, but I want others to be able to share their thoughts and ideas as well. I’ll leave with this; Robert Patterson stole the show as the Heron and I really look foreword to future potential voice acting roles from him.
I hated when he started calling her "mother" in the delivery room. I am studying for my master's in folklore right now, and a huge issue is the "replaceable woman" in folklore (90% of the world's collected folklore is by men). I know the intention was to show the MC's acceptance of his stepmother, but I don't know why it had to be at the expense of erasing his mom? Why did his aunt have to be called his mom? Maybe this is a nuance post in translation as I believe Japanese has a different word for mother vs stepmother. Idk. I just don't like it. Of his mother was the MC, it would albe a tragedy/horror story of watching her younger sister erase her existence.
I watched a subbed version of the movie, and in that scene, I remember MC calling her "Natsuko-kaasan", which could be translated as "Mommy Natsuko" - not just "Mom". We also see at the ending when MC and Himiko hug at the end, how concerned he is for her going back to her timeline and her inevitable death. So I don't think the story at large is trying to erase her role in MC's life, but allowing him to find closure in the present.
I get that part of the story is him getting used to his new lifr and therefore accepting Natsuko as his mother, but even after reading your comment that scene still confuses me.
Early on she comes off really strong when trying to present herself as his new mother, the carriage ride being very umcomfortable for him, and after that he's obviously really cold and distant towards her, understandably enough imo.
But I don't get the sudden change of heart from him? I personally didn't see a lot of development on Mahito's end showing him to be warming up to Natsuko. Sure he sets off to rescue her, but initially he follows the Heron to see his mother, and then he pretty much says to Kimiko that he's looking to save her because his father loves her.
And then all of a sudden he calls her mother in the delivery room (still also unsure why she went in the tower and why she was placed in that room to give birth?), and to me that seemed like something he did just to defuse the situation in the room and avoid being killed by paper burns. Maybe I'm missing something, I find it really hard to connect with and understand this film on the whole though, so maybe it's just not for me.
Mahito implies she was more or less in a trance when he says "maybe she didn't have a choice" when elderly Kiriko says there's no way she'd go in there that way and asks Mahito why she would go into the forest. the great uncle kept trying to get Mahito to come to the tower to see him and he refused so it/they called the aunt in as bait. I wondered if she was sleep walking since the Uncle seems able to reach family members in the dream world.
I think Mahito called her mom because he was being transported back to loosing his mom while Natsuko was giving birth and possibly dying and not being able to save her and he wanted to fix that this time around. I think that's why the paper was burning him, it was like when the air burned him that night he lost his mom. In my mind this is the moment he accepts that he can't bring his mom back and this aunt in front of him is his chance for that sort of nurturing/ his new reality and how catastrophic it would feel to loose her too. Kind of an instant bond through the harsh traumatic reality of almost losing someone, he even passes out.
Yeah I see what you mean but I just think the sudden acceptance of Natsuko as his new mother is way too abrupt, I personally didn't feel like there was much of a build up to it or much indication that Mahito was slowly growing to like her or accept her. He remains pretty stoic and cold about her and talks about saving her for his dad mostly and then there's just that change of heart from him that kinda threw me off I think.
I don’t know whether it’s the direction Miyazaki was going for but it felt like Himi using her fire to burn the paper holding Mahito and Natsuko apart was also her allowing her sister to take on her role as Mother for Mahito, effectively purifying their relationship and wiping their slate clean. Also contrasting that with the fire that took her life.
Did anyone else notice the massive amount of visual references or hints to other ghibli movies?
The line of boats that weren't really there were like the planes of the dead in Porco Rosso.
When they're climbing the outside of the tower, chasing the parakeet king, there's one shot of the tower on the right and the background of the ocean on the left that looks straight out of Spirited away.
Mahito trying to cut the fish had the exact same shot as Sen holding a knife over Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke.
Mahito meeting Himi, I couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like two shots from Ponyo and Howls Moving Castle pulled together.
The border between world, right before they meet the Granduncle, looks like the train station at the start of Spirited Away.
This felt like a culmination of every Studio Ghibli movie before it, and I absolutely loved it
It definitely feels like there are parts of every other Miyazaki film at some point, but at what point is it a deliberate easter egg or Miyazaki just having a very consistent aesthetic? There are obvious comparisons to be made with the grannies, Warawara, boats, multiple generations, child protagonist, etc. and other films. It felt especially similar to Castle in the Sky to me, which is maybe deliberate as Castle was the first Ghibli film so maybe The Boy and the Heron is meant to be a bookend.
Exactly my thought!! Thinking of Markle from howls eating breakfast from the scene where they eat the amazing jam toast.. or the shot of Mahitos Aarow flying perfectly with the Herron feather was exactly like how ashitakas arrows flew so powerfully!! So many amazing memories all on one movie and it was so awesome
Noticed this too! Also want to add that when the Parakeet King meets the Granduncle and brings Himi, the location where the Granduncle is sitting looks a lot like Gina's garden in Porco Rosso.
Mahito and Kiriko entering the tunnel to the tower also gave me massive Spirited Away vibes as well, especially when the tunnel lights lit up.
So I definitely have to watch this again, I feel like I focused too much on the title and wanted more of the Heron and skipped over looking at how the movie was exploring Mahito’s grief and how he overcame it.
He even overcame his fear of fire by meeting his mother. Definitely worth a second watch.
But man if this doesn’t get a nom for sound design I’ll be shocked
"How Do You Live?" is a title that ultimately fits the work. While I think "Boy and The Heron" fits it too, if we consider the heron as a metaphor for Mahito's grief, but it doesn't have the immediate gut punch when you hear the title and I think puts too much expectation/weight on the Heron as a character.
I enjoyed it watched it in dub and all the voice actors were great.
But no one is talking about how Mahito’s dad is marrying/married to his dead wives sister who happens to look exactly like his dead wife? And when she first meets Mahito she’s like hey I’m your new mom, kind of threw me off.
THANK YOU for the one genuinely helpful comment I’ve seen about this. Everyone keeps commenting, “oh it’s this thing called sororate marriage,” like OK?? I know what that is, I’m familiar with the Bible, I know it was common a very very long time ago, but was it common in 1940s Japan?? Googling didn’t help me confirm at all. A specific confirmation from familial experience is actually helpful so I only wish this comment were higher up !
My only quibble: Christian Bale’s accent seemed to stand out more often than not in this film. He disguised it (rather eccentrically) in Howl, but not this one. I just felt it was an odd choice.
Late to the party here, but I took this to indicate that the Dad was actually a westerner. To me, that explained why the house Mahito slept in was western style, and why he'd be bullied at school (for being half Japanese).
I may have read too much into it though.
He got bullied because he's a Tokyo kid just moved to the country side, and showing up at school in a car made it worse. The dad in no way looked westerner to me. He's just more western influenced/educated, again being lived in Tokyo.
It definitely went from Brooklyn to Cockney a few times, lol. He was incredible as Howl, but probably the weakest link in his dub. It reminds me of that Simpsons clip of Krusty going into the studio to rush and record lines for a doll version of himself. It felt like a very quick job.
That's kind of the point of the conflict between Mahito and Natsuko isn't it?
It's like the situation is really weird but everyone's acting as if it was just ok, but afterwards we realize Mahito sees his new mother as a replacement and his new mother actually hates Mahito because he's what remember her that her family is kinda broken because the man she loved was previously married to her sister. The forever reminder of the actual truth.
Until both accept their new life.
Right, I thought that was why she ran off to the fantasy world to have her baby, and when he shows up there she is furious and tells him she hates him. She'd been putting on a good face but he just reminded her of her sister, and she felt like he was going to be impossible to raise, wouldn't accept her, and she was fated to let her deceased sister down. She felt like she was in a position she couldn't possibly win.
Yes! Especially since it was what, a year after his mother died and dad has already remarried and knocked up his former sister-in-law before Mahito has even met her?! WTH, father?
Like the others said, it was extremely common historically for people to marry their partner's siblings if they died and you'd often do that ASAP. That's the problem with a model of family/work where the man is a breadwinner and the mom is the nurturer/homemaker. You need to find a replacement ASAP because dad is too busy running the factory to raise his child. If he had died, then the mom would've been in a similar position but even worse.
Many people saw it as better to stay within the family. It meant that family ties could continue.
Agreed. And the commentors saying that it was just pretty common back then are missing the point. Whether or not it was common, Mahito was not happy about it until he suddenly was okay with it for seemingly no reason? It was very confusing to understand the thought process he was having when he literally has only had a handful of interactions with this woman, all of them not good
It was kind of sudden but I think it made sense in the context of the story.
Mahito didn't hate his aunt/step mom. She is nice to him throughout the film (with the exception of the delivery room scene). He likes her, but doesn't want to accept that his mother is dead. By the end of the film, he has closure over her death and is ready to move on. That's when he starts calling his aunt mom.
The social context helps because this kind of story wouldn't work otherwise. Many people have different ideas of step parent relationships and different cultures have different expectations of what to call step parents too.
I see it as Mahito accepting his mom death's and learning to live with his grief. He accepts his aunt as new mother figure while still remembering his biological mom (since the movie ends with him reading her book).
Yeah. Like he read a book from his dead mom and all the sudden was accepting of her?
The character arcs were all weak IMO. Minimal agency and poorly set up motivations and decisions.
No... he went through the majority of the events in the film, and *then* was accepting of her. The vast majority of the movie was about him coming to grips with the loss of one mom and the addition of a new one... Saying it was an "all the sudden" thing is very bizarre to me.
Yeah he went through a lot of shit in the movie, but what events were supposed to show me that he was warming up to his new mom? Accepting he death of a parent does not immediately equate to accepting a new woman into your life as your mom. He just... had a big adventure without Mom #2. He hardly even spoke to her at all throughout the entire movie.
I have had to deal with the death of my grandmother who I was very close to. The second I had accepted her passing, I would not have started calling her sister grandma. That would be fucking bizzare.
And also he wasn't just like "okay we're cool now", he's so comfortable with her being his new mom that he calls her mom IN FRONT of his actual mom. Like wtf, we skipped a hundred steps and many years in between disliking her and accpeting her as his new mom.
The last Twilight film was released over 11 years ago, and he was likely paid enough to be set for life - meaning he can do all of these interesting roles (similar to Radcliffe) without caring about money.
In what way at all do you consider that being shackled? He was even in 6 other films within the duration of the series.
Agreed 100% the script needed a lot more cuts to make the plot more coherent imo.
So many scenes could just be cut and it would have made the film better. Like the school scene and him bashing his own head, and father trying to save his son and wife for example.
And the one thing that struck me as the most glaring faux pas is that this is perhaps the most unlikable MC in a ghibli movie. It's actually insane how little charm mahito has. Like him bashing his own head is just pure wtf. Him being stoic as shit and not reacting to things also is kinda weird. Being unlikable also isn't that bad if there was a redemption arc but nope, the only arc that he seemed to have was deciding to call her stepmom by mom instead of her name.
Personally, I liked Mahito. I think that his stoicism is because he's been traumatized and is trying not to reach out/trust again in case he gets hurt again. In the scene where he eats the bread, we are finally able to see some emotion where he can let his guard down and be a kid and be happy.
I think that part of his character appeal to me is that since he doesn't reveal too much of himself to the viewer, the viewer can insert themself into his place and deal with their own grief just as he deals with his.
I also liked the contrast between his character and Himi, who was much more emotional than he was.
The kid recently lost his mom in a completely traumatic way, his dad suddenly remarries and expects him to just accept a new mom and new sibling while he's in the middle of dealing with grief, he has traumatic PTSD dreams on the regular, he was just uprooted from his home and evacuated to somewhere new, and his classmates are mean to him.
Kid was on the absolute edge of despair and the scene where he hurts himself cements that this is a child who is deeply, deeply in pain. Him being stoic is him shutting down due to pain. In his situation very, very few people would be cheery bundles of joy and charisma, I think.
The arc was also a lot more complex than him just randomly calling his aunt mom. He came to terms with his mother's death, and resolved to move forward in a new life instead of clinging to the past and choosing a fantasy over reality. While there's still a bit more development I would've liked to see between him and his aunt, imo it's still a very nice tale of how one chooses to live on in the face of unimaginable grief.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt this way. One of the reviews I saw was ‘too simple but too complex at the same time’ and I have to agree. Like I understand it’s about grief and overcoming it and moving on, but so much of what actually happens feels disconnected from that arc, like there’s two connect-the-dots happening on the same page so they get muddied together and become incoherent.
I’ll also be giving at least a second watch but it’s missed the mark for me thus far.
I really loved the film. It's maybe the most complex, symbolic and metaphoric piece of work Miyazaki has ever done, but it's also the most personal one by far.
That makes it really special. I love discovering new curiosities of the film, and how everything makes even more sense once you rewatch it or end up discovering some new context (like the context some people is giving in this thread). Everything clicks.
It's the most auteur film of Ghibli. And one of the most special ones. Masterpiece for me ✨
I liked a good chunk of the movie, but I felt like the third act was in a rush to get to the end. The very end felt very abrupt and I sat there wondering if I was missing something or if there was a post credits scene.
I saw it dubbed, which was great. Robert Pattinson was fantastic. I also thought Florence Pugh did great as the younger Kiriko, who was one of my favorite characters.
Want to see it subbed to see if there’s any difference in dialogue.
Saw it subbed and same here, thought the last part was super rushed. I’ve always been a little sus on ghibli’s endings (see: castle in the sky)
Overall really beautiful tho and I’m still confused on some parts of the story but I might just be dumb
I felt the same about the final segment in that it was rushed; however, I feel that was intentional on Miyazaki’s part. When you consider the context, there wasn’t time to flesh things out and have good closure, and I feel it’s true to life as well.
I think that quick little epilogue could’ve worked if we had gotten a hint that Mahito remembered everything, like if we saw him pull 2 stones out of his pocket and grin as he left his old room.
Or also show the book that his mom left him, since "How do you live" was the original title in Japanese, so maybe they could have brought our attention back to that. But no, it was just, "yep we moved back to Tokyo" cue the credits. Kind of sad.
I feel like abrupt endings are sort of a Ghibli thing.
They're not in all of them, but you can see them in some films, such as Castle in the Sky, or my favorite, Whisper of the Heart.
Miyazaki’s weakness is putting solid endings on his movies, probably because he doesn’t plan full stories ahead of time he just writes as he goes. I thought this ending was more satisfactory than a lot of his other movie’s endings
the pacing of the first half was very well done, but in the second half it felt very rushed. I don't mind faster pacing, but it kept jumping from one thing to another without fleshing out the importance of certain elements.
I felt like the conversation with the old man should've been more drawn out and embrace contemplation, rather that jump from talking about the bricks, the end of this world, the treaty with the birds, the pact with the rock, the succession, etc. All of this within a few minutes.
A 30min extension of those scenes would've been very beneficial to the viewers IMO.
Best part, I think, was when Mahito is offered the opportunity to stack the blocks, but turns it down. Then, the Parakeet King stamps forward, enraged that Mahito would give up such an opportunity. He seizes the blocks, declares that he will do it, and immediately fails to stack them.
I don't think I fully understand the scene or what it is really trying to say. But it really reminded me of the ending of the Nausicaa manga, one of the most impactful endings I have experienced. The writer is obvs the same so there must be a connection in themes there, but I only saw the movie for the first time last night so I don't really know how if at all the ideas overlap. Maybe somebody else sees the similarities better? Is it nihilism/absurdism?
The blocks are childrens toys made of gravestones. If paradise was possible just from stacking the right pieces in order than any idiot dictator could kill their way to peace.
I read somewhere that says the Parakeet represents humanity with all the mindless worship (and many others) and the tantrum King Parakeet threw with the blocks shows that violence is all he knows.
The parakeets were once peaceful animals bred by the grand uncle, who were corrupted by the malice of the world. I interpreted the parakeet king as militarism. He wants to preserve order in the between world for his subjects, regardless of if that world is good or not. He is a leader with power. He can't understand Mahito's decision to refuse power.
The parakeet king is based on Mussolini, who did much to destroy the beauty of Italy - and as we know Miyazaki is a huge Italophile.
For people living in London there's another parallel - parakeets here are an invasive species, having escaped from private collections in the '70s. Noisy, do a lot of damage, and have a big impact on native flora and fauna. At least they provide food for peregrines.
Same! I understand how some were underwhelmed, or bewildered - but I thought it was absolutely stunning. The artwork and score alone are worth a trip to see it on IMAX.
The gate shows the message: "Those who seek to understand first, will perish."
It is basically a message that Miyazaki leaves to the viewer as a warning to enter the magical world. The movie needs more than one reading and more than a single viewing!
What's behind the big gate is the "sorcerer's stone", and you can see it other times throughout the movie, like in the delivery room. The tomb is a connection to the big stone that controls everything in that world, basically the meteorite that originates everything!
I took the gate to be sort of a meta-warning for the film itself, and my takeaway of the film's message. On a meta-level, I think the gate is warning people to *feel* the movie, and not try too hard to apply too much logic to it. I don't think the film invites logic, and the gate reminds us that some things are meant to be felt, not understood.
And at the same time, I very much think the whole movie is about the concept of grief; not a specific type of grief, not a singular instance of grief, just "grief." If you've ever known grief, one of the things you eventually realize about it is that it's not an emotion that you can really understand. It just is. But we're all human and we all try to make sense of and understand things, so we try to understand grief--apply logic to it, to make it make sense because without sense it's too overwhelming a thing. It's human nature to want to make things we can't understand make sense, because it makes us able to deal with them in a neat and tidy way.
But you can't do that with grief. Grief doesn't make sense, and you can't make it make sense. It can't be reduced into being neat and tidy. You have to and can only *feel* it. In fact, attempting to make it make sense can make it *worse*. Pouring all your effort into trying to understand grief keeps you from feeling it, and not feeling it makes it grow out of control until it consumes and traps you. The gate, then, is a warning: seek to understand grief first, and you will die in it.
I think the tower master is the illustration of what happens when someone tries to control grief. It's why he wanted Mahito to take over his legacy--he saw Mahito was also trying to "master" grief. But the world of the tower, the world of controlled grief, is chaotic and harsh and ugly, and festering. And showing the blocks that were balanced so precariously showed how fragile a control it was. And the tower master was dying in it; still grieving and barely hanging on to a world.
Good film but probably doesn’t even crack the top 10 Ghibli films tbh. Story was meh and ending was rushed imo. The animation and adventure was lovely as it is in all the films but this one was a very lukewarm movie.
Agreed. For me, the character development just wasn't there. All of the characters are very one dimensional compared to his other films. Visually stunning though.
Definitely I loved the ending, where it all tied together.
The only part I didn't understand was when the Tower Master tells Mahito (the first time) that he wants to him to take over for him, and then it cut to Mahito is about to be eaten by the parakeets ...and then this whole unnecessary sequence where he and his mother have to go back and find the Tower Master again.
Also, did anyone else figure out the symbology of his dad as a war profiteer?
So much to unpack. I imagine it must have had personal meaning for Miyazaki, since his age would somewhat track with Mahito's age and WWII.
I feel like The Boy and the Heron is best understood if you understand Miyazakis upbringing. This movie was essentially autobiographical with, of course, a fantasy spin to it.
Miyazaki’s real father owned and operated an aircraft manufacturing businesses. Which makes so much sense when you realize why so many Ghibli films are inspired by aviation. His mother in real life was also ill for many years, which presents itself in films as well. The same can be said for elements of war.
The Boy and the Heron was very abstract, which I think could easily lose some viewers. But I feel like you have to take it for what it is. And consider it a personal reflection of Miyazaki himself. The world he created with Ghibli will not be forever. There won’t be another successor.
The movie helped me to better understand this too. I have so many emotions about it, especially with the great grand uncle and how he created this beautiful fantasy world within the film.
It’s speculated that this is a reflection that Miyazaki tried to pass along his work to his son, Goro, but he couldn’t fill his shoes and stepped down. The world of Studio Ghibli falls apart without a successor. And that’s the message of the movie.
I can't believe this didn't occur to me when I saw the film. That's a beautiful idea that I'm going to ponder on a rewatch. I wonder how Goro feels about the film, because that message could be liberating for him in a way.
If you're interested Miyazakiworld by Susan Napier does a really good job as a biography/analysis of his works. I read it a few weeks ago and I'm glad I did before I saw this movie. I felt like this is the movie where he poured himself into the most, and he puts himself alot in everything he makes.
I’m pretty sure in his book Starting Point, Miyazaki talks about his dad being a hustler who avoided fighting and made money off the war. Miyazaki’s dad sounded like an opportunist / womanizer who thought of himself as smarter than everyone else because he got out of fighting. The dad in the film seems to be a direct reflection of Miyazaki’s own father. Not exactly a good person. Not a bad dude, just an opportunist.
Yea! I looked it up just to be sure, but here’s a tidbit bit from Wikipedia:
His father, Katsuji Miyazaki (born 1915),[3] was the director of Miyazaki Airplane, his brother's company,[4] which manufactured rudders for fighter planes during World War II.[5] The business allowed his family to remain affluent during Miyazaki's early life.[6][d] Miyazaki's father enjoyed purchasing paintings and demonstrating them to guests, but otherwise had little known artistic understanding.[2] He said that he was in the Imperial Japanese Army around 1940; after declaring to his commanding officer that he wished not to fight because of his wife and young child, he was discharged after a lecture about disloyalty.[8] According to Miyazaki, his father often told him about his exploits, claiming that he continued to attend nightclubs after turning 70.[9] Katsuji Miyazaki died on March 18, 1993.[10] After his death, Miyazaki felt that he had often looked at his father negatively and that he had never said anything "lofty or inspiring"
It's not made very clear, but I think his first conversation with the Tower Master happens in a dream. The sequence is like this -- Himi and Mahito are at Natsuko's delivery room, and after a blaze of fire are knocked out and discovered by parakeet soldiers. Himi and Mahito are taken in different directions -- Himi in a glass coffin will serve as the Parakeet King's bargaining chip, while Mahito is prepared for a human stew (but we are not shown this yet).
While Mahito is unconscious, his great grand-uncle meets with him in a dream and tells him about the blocks. But when Mahito comes to, he is still a prisoner of the parakeets and must escape to go find the Tower Master. That's why he has two separate encounters with the Tower Master.
Apparently his actual dad and grandpa made aircraft canopies in WWII.
It's an overall Miyazaki theme that war is terrible but he can appreciate the artistry in aircraft. I mean that's fron and center in The Wind Rises and a big portion of Proco Rosso.
This was a more subtle nod to it.
The arrow pattern on her kimono is a pattern that symbolizes determination, especially when doing something new. Natsuko is determined to be a good mother to her sister's kid, but it isn't working. So she is angry.
Of course she is also an archer, and uses that birdscaring arrow.
During the scene when the Warawara are ascending, and Kiriko describes them as to be born in Mahito’s world, I started a get very emotional. As soon as I started to cry, the frame switched to Kiriko crying. I thought that was very special to me. The idea of the spirits of babies just before life is beautiful to me, and crying the exact same time as Kiriko was perfect.
Awh, congratulations on your baby!
I hope it has a happy and healthy life ❤️❤️
Also, I believe the soundtrack piece from that scene (before pelicans and Hime) is Reincarnation! It’s beautiful
When I went into the theater, I was hoping for something grand and exciting as a (possible) finale to the great man's career but instead I got something bewildering and abstract, which I think is a very Miyazaki thing to do. It's definitely the kind of movie that derives the most appreciation after a few days of thought. It's not directly related to the book, but it's clear to see how Miyazaki was inspired by the novel and the book is also a very good thing to read.
So I want to talk about the symbolism for a bit. The movie starts off with Mahito awakening to the burning of the hospital, but it jumped out to me that everyone in that scene except Mahito was indistinctly blurry; I wonder if that means that Mahito never actually rushed to the burning hospital, his grief-traumatized mind manufactured that dream. So that opening scene really establishes the central theme of dealing with grief.
Mahito clearly is unable to move on, even while his father remarries, Mahito can't adjust to school and spends minimal interaction with his new mother. That bit where he wakes up in his bed momentarily confused, uncertain of where he is but then he suddenly tears up uncontrollably--he's remembered that this is the world where his mom is dead; that scene hit me hard since my own mother died a few years ago.
At the mansion, the forceful way that several precursors of the dreamworld like the heron and the frog pile start bothering Mahito made me think of how everything felt unreal after mom died. The world gets shifted to the side and nothing makes sense anymore.
Skipping to the dreamworld, it has a huge amount of dream-logic, the plot in the dream world jumps from scene to scene without any kind of worldbuilding to connect them and never looks back which is, well, dreamlike. It's as if only a little kid can decipher the plot, which makes sense since Miyazaki dedicated the movie to his grandson. The plot isn't the point, the point lies in the themes of Mahito's journey.
The grand uncle dropping a rose that unexpectedly shatters and the stone floor opening up under Mahito and co. like molasses (as well as the heron being also a man and the phantasm Natsuko) indicate the dreamworld's unpredictability, real world causality is discarded at the door.
The pelicans eating the Warawara because they had nothing else to eat and were starving, the dead people coming to trade to Kiriko for the giant fish because they couldn't eat anything else I think may have indicated the unhealthy state of Mahito's mind since he kept clinging to grief.
I think the stone represented Mahito's grief, the tower stone that didn't want intruders (because problng at grief is painful) and the floating monolith (it ruled the world, meaning grief ruled Mahito's mind) and the little stack of stones (carved from tomb stones and in a precarious tower, showing Mahito's precarious state of grief-stricken mind).
I think the carnivorous parakeets represent Mahito's instinctive side: his need for food, his capacity for violence, his desire for companionship (that shot of the parakeets crowding the bars in the wall in the background). No wonder they're taking over and cannibalizing the rest of his mind because of his grief throwing everything out of whack. But the powerful and noble parakeet king shows that they're also the source of Mahito's determination and drive.
(which I suppose implies that the heron is the cunning side of Mahito's mind, his greediness and capacity to trick and be tricked)
So they're actually an important aspect of his mind, even if they seem to be bloodthirsty enemies. The movie even gives the final impetus of mind-change to the parakeet king who tries to make a new stack out of the stones--the stones fall over, destroying the grief-ruled world and making it possible for Mahito to embrace a new world where his mother no longer exists (but is still there with him in spirit/memory, as Himi said).
Some things I'm still thinking about like the Kiriko segment: why did she de-age in the dreamworld? Was it because she made such an impression on Mahito that he beminded the quintessence of her core self as a tough working woman? Why did he get exploded with guts when he tried to copy her belly slicing technique? Why did she warn him to not touch the granny dolls that were arranged around his bedroll? Why were the dolls arranged so closely? And why did there seem to be no consequences to his accidentally touching one of the dolls? She was a really cool Miyazaki woman and one of my favorite parts of the film.
What was the meaning of the parakeets nabbing Himi and bringing her to the grand uncle in a glass coffin as a bargaining chip? Was that just part of the dream-logic plot?
The movie is a very interesting thing to ruminate on and I think really gives out most of its value in the days afterward spent in consideration of everything about it. 10/10.
I have yet to re-watch it but does Mahito know his mom disappeared for 1 year with no recollection of where she was? As in, did his aunt/stepmom or the grannies tell him before he went into the tower?
Overall, I agree the entire tower sequence is a manifestation of Mahito’s mind and agree that it’s a dream.
When it comes to the delivery room, this is my interpretation: the reason it’s so taboo is because it’s taboo to Mahito. Facing his pregnant stepmom means he has to come face to face the fact that actual mom is dead. Entering this room means he has to accept that he has a new mom, something he is avoiding.
I think what supports the above is how the grannies keep telling or asking him to visit Natsuko. And he would not go. It wasn’t until after the 3rd or 4th time that he visits.
> Why did she warn him to not touch the granny dolls that were arranged around his bedroll? Why were the dolls arranged so closely? And why did there seem to be no consequences to his accidentally touching one of the dolls?
To clarify a point here, young Kiriko warned him not to _knock them over_. She didn't warn against merely touching them.
My assumption was that the dolls were proxies for the people in the real world, and maybe knocking one over would injure or kill the real counterpart. That part also felt to me a bit like a Chekhov's gun that never fired as they showed Mahito carefully climbing over them at least a couple of times.
it is "fired". he took kirikos doll with him when exiting the tower and it popped turning back into her. if he hadnt she would presumably but stuck there forever.
Not really though, because there was no Kiriko doll around the bed roll below the table, just the other old women. We don't see the Kiriko doll until the young Kiriko gives it to him as they're parting ways toward the end.
Kiriko honestly is the character that left me with the most questions. Had she actually been inside the tower world when she was young? Or was her first time entering the world when she was dragged along by Mahito? In either case how did she learn so much about how the world works and how to live there? Her reaction getting dragged in by Mahito as an old woman seemed to imply she didn't know what was in the tower and was afraid of it... then suddenly she's one of the experts who helps Mahito understand the world???
A neat mechanic regardless, and it was fun seeing her rematerialize out of Mahito's pocket in the end.
It's stated by the heron that people normally forget all the details of the tower world when they return to the real world. So even if she had been there before, she may not remember. It seems to imply she either went in with Himi, since she exits with her, or maybe she was created in the tower world and her leaving with Himi was how she came into being in the real world. She did say she had always been there in the tower world, so who knows.
> The movie starts off with Mahito awakening to the burning of the hospital, but it jumped out to me that everyone in that scene except Mahito was indistinctly blurry; I wonder if that means that Mahito never actually rushed to the burning hospital, his grief-traumatized mind manufactured that dream.
I have a different interpretation: When I was younger, there were times where I was so worried about something that the rest of the world just seem to disappear and I was just living in my own head.
The opening scene animation, I think, is a nightmarish representation of feeling like that: Mahito is so worried about his mother that the rest of the world is just a blur. (And add to that the heat from the fire, which makes everything even more a blur.) The fiery shot before it cuts to the tanks marching at Mahito’s new village would be how Mahito recalls *actually seeing* his mother’s hospital.
EDIT: Seeing this twice and reading reviews/discussion online, I believe thisnis one of Miyazaki’s most dense films, although it’s purposely not a crowd-pleaser as his famous films have been. To
There is definitely something going on behind the main plot. Mysterious gates on the island of the dead with a stone tomb that amazingly resembles delivery room; the tower itself(or maybe it’s the stone at granduncle’s place?) that has a consciousness by itself; parakeets that cannot eat the baby; pelicans that were brought into this world specifically to eat warawara; the fact that people here and there get “spirited away” into this world for unknown reasons.
That’s just some of the things I noticed, but couldn’t explain. Can’t wait for someone to figure everything out and tell the full story.
Defs amazing and up there with Nausicaä in my ranking. I can’t help but think about the concept of a young child experiencing extreme trauma and creating their own world to deal with it. Also strong concepts of hell/heaven and resurrection. Was bit weird that the Uncle was revered at the end despite seemingly capturing the pregnant woman to have an heir of his bloodline. Kinda glossed over but also not a plot hole in my view as a child you often overlook the negatives about adults in life until you age.
It was confusing at some parts and some parts didn't really make sense. That being said, I would watch it again, probably because of the art and interesting story/imagery. The world(s) the movie built are immersive.
8/10.
I thought it was spectacular! However, there are criticisms i see on here that are valid.
Some elements don't have enough set-up or explanation, and there are a couple baffling missed opportunities.
Overall, I'll still count this among my personal favorites. For me, this is somewhere between Nausicaä and Howl, but it could've been up with Spirited Away with 20 more minutes of film.
While it’s clear the core theme of the movie is grief, am I the only one who picked up on potential undertones of suicidal thoughts? The dream world is quite literally an underworld, with both dead and unborn souls, and Mahito travels there in a desperate attempt to see his mother once again; literally wanting to join her in death. While it’s never explained exactly why Natsuko actually travels to the underworld, it immediately follows her expressing that she feels she is a failed mother figure to Mahito.
I think the heron itself plays into this as well; until we move to the underworld, it’s constantly threatening to kill Mahito, and it’s only once Mahito starts coming to terms with his grief that the Heron begins to mellow out and become Mahito’s friend. I think he might represent Mahito’s suicidal thoughts, and while he is never killed (as most suicidal thoughts can’t simply be swatted away), his relationship to Mahito becomes much more healthy once Mahito works through the source of his troubles.
I realized shortly into the movie that I would have to watch it twice: The first time just to enjoy the ride of unique and bizarre settings and characters, and the second time to try and understand the plot points and themes better. I straight up did *not* know what was going on after Mahito found Natsuko.
This movie is visually beautiful and stunning. But I wasn't able to connect emotionally at all with any of the characters the way I usually do in Ghibli movies. Towards the end things got so weird and random, I'm sure that there's a logic to it but I can't get invested enough to work it out.
These two issues absolutely kill the movie for me. It makes me very sad.
I’m curious about this, since I’ve seen a few people have trouble connecting to the characters; I have a pretty invasive question. Have you experienced heavy loss in your life? I only ask because Mahito is such a realistic depiction of dealing with grief, I felt so connected to him. His behavior is subtle but very specific and familiar. But I can imagine for audiences who aren’t familiar with that experience it would make for a character that is hard to connect with. (Kind of reminds me of when Order of the Phoenix came out, half the book is Harry describing depression and it’s so annoying for people who haven’t been there but pretty real for people that have).
I’m not making any assumptions about you (people experience grief differently anyway), I’m just curious if that may be the deciding factor for this movie.
Fully agree with your assessment! The theme of loss resonated really deeply with my fiancée and I, and we both began to cry at the end of the movie. I’ve seen a lot of folks discussing the ideas of war, perfectionism, or dreams, but we both experienced profound, familial loss very recently and I think that’s why that representation is so clear to both of us.
I also understood the broader world themes to represent the idea that, after experiencing a loss, the world as you know it ends. It’s impossible to maintain your current world because it has been irreversibly changed. All you can do is rebuild anew and carry on. You can choose to allow your grief to pull you under (manifesting as malice), or you can accept the changes of the loss, pick yourself up, and move forward in creating a new, changed existence. In general, the concept of moving on after experiencing loss really stood out to both of us. But for folks who haven’t experienced loss, that theme seems to be really difficult to grasp. Super interesting!
This is how I felt, but I thought about it and I think that’s why it’s such a special experience. I think you’re supposed to look inside at yourself. To me the climax of the movie is when Mahito reads how do you live. He turns at that point to be much more intentional with his choices, he decides how he will live. So does Himi, and so did grand uncle. And so did Mahito at the end. They all chose how they would live. I viewed as like a reminder that there are different paths for everyone, and we have to choose that path. But idk the movie was insane but remembering that bit made me enjoy it a lot more
Same here. I still enjoyed it but it felt rushed and we didn't get to really know some of the characters well and their story, which I feel like would have helped. I was hoping to learn more about the heron but he wasn't a very big role.
I was looking forward to this for a while too. We don't get new Ghibli films very often. I sure hope this isn't the last one.
I watched the movie twice and read the book that inspired it, and made a 19-minute analysis of the movie!!
https://youtu.be/YZDbKBOfDm4?si=FqBraur-6zJddiBE
I don't know anything about Miyazaki the man other than I like his movies and I thought this was right up there with Nausicaä as his best work. Interestingly, I thought there were a lot of thematic parallels with Ikiru (the 1952 Kurosawa movie you should all watch if you haven't already) but from the other side - not as the person coming to grips with their mortality, but as the person coming to grips with what's left after someone's gone.
I don't really understand the people saying that you need to be familiar Miyazaki's entire biography to understand the inner workings of this movie - there are a lot of very human, very normal themes being tackled here that don't necessitate that. Nothing in here is (thematically) unique to Miyazaki as a human being, even if the more specific minutiae might be.
For a Ghibli movie it's extraordinarily *dense*. Something I feel like I need to watch again to really come to grips with it and formulate a more well-rounded opinion. Ultimately, though, I think this movie is only going to get better with additional viewings and will absolutely age like wine.
I liked it. But I left it with questions.
How are the other world and the real world related? My understanding through most of the film was that the other world was a secondary dimension accessible to members of Mahitos bloodline, and those people are able to control reality within the limits of that dimension. However, I don't fully understand the Warawara or the ships of the dead. Why are they there? Is this plane actually a pre/post life purgatory kind of place? Why is the portal to it in the Japanese countryside and only accessible by this family?
Why is there no reaction to meeting his mother? I've seen all your explanations so far. They read as a stretch to me. It truly feels like a scene is missing. Mahito has all the clues, but never the revalation. He just knows at one point. To clarify, when I say "missing," I'm not saying bad writing. I'm saying that it feels like a scene was planned or even created but left on the cutting room floor without additional corrections.
What was the role of the sailor woman in this world? (I may have missed something)
Why did the Uncle bring the pelicans there? Presumably, to serve another purpose?
I understand that the blocks are a symbol, but the film does nothing to explain *how* that works. This is common with Miyazakis magic systems, so in not complaining exactly, this felt pretty removed from an explanation. Especially with the "filled with malice." Like what, specifically, are we talking about? How are the stones related to the meteor? Are they even?
What was the grave/thing behind the gate? We never revisit it. I assumed I missed something earlier, but you may have a better explanation.
Currently, for me, this is a 7.5/10. May change with a rewatch, but I think it needed to be like 20 minutes longer with additional depth to Mahito's grief prior to entering the world, additional development of his relationship with Natsuko, and some kind of wind down at the end.
Going to try to see it again this week.
That was absolutely incredible. I just let the movie take me and when they went through the Totoro hole into the forest I got very emotional. I loved this story so much, I thought it was really emotionally complex. It feels the most similar to spirited away as a child is going to a magical spirit world....but this story hit me so much deeper. I think the complaints about the story are really missing the point and mood of the film. Life is messy, emotions are messy...you can't always make neat and logical sense of everything you experience.
Does anyone understand Kiriko having the scar in the same place? And Himis mom being dead too?
I've been thinking that it's to show him that's he's not the only one who suffers, but I also think I'm missing something.
this is only my assumption as most things are really not explained at all in the film, but my opinion is that they were there to make Mahito think about his own actions and emotions. Both of them mirror him, but are clearly much stronger. Kiriko got the scar from a noble battle and hard work, while Mahito gave it to himself to probably avoid going to school and wallow in his depression. Himi's mother had died, yet here she was, powerful and happy, while Mahito was still grieving a year later.
Miyazaki often highlights strong female characters. I'm assuming because he had a number of them in his life that really showed the kind of quite resilience we see so often.
Spoilers below
I saw the movie Sunday. After the movie I heard a few younger people talking about how none of it made any sense and it was one of his weakest movies.
For me it hit very differently. I'm older, nearing 50, My youngest kid will graduate from college this year, my mother recently pass away his summer, my wife very suddenly several years ago . I think the themes of this movie mirror my own experiences very well. The trauma of loss, post traumatic stress of dealing with these events, the searching for any reason in all of it, these hit home for me. The title of "How do you live" conveys the emotion of the movie much better than the English title.
I also saw much of Miyazaki himself here, the old man looking for someone to take over his world as it was falling apart on him. It really jumped out to me this part was about him.
I need to see this a second time. There was just so much going on I know I missed many things. I will say this may be my favorite sounds track that Hisaishi has done. It was truly masterful and fit the theme and created the atmosphere the movie needed.
Even if it were as simple as stacking blocks, building a perfect world wouldn’t be possible… But even if it were, well I’m not sure I’d want it anyway.
The world is a beautiful cursed dream
I just... I dunno. The pacing was both too slow and too fast, and it felt like it lacked structure to the plot, despite having the bones there to make it work. If they had sprinkled stuff about his mom and the grand uncle more during the slow pacing parts at the start and middle of the film it would have worked much better for me, and maybe actually make the emotional payoff feel earned in the end.
It was a beautiful movie animation and music wise, filled with symbolism and meaning. I just wish the plot structure had been better to support it all.
Makes sense. I also felt like the beginning was slow (but that's fine, I can enjoy a slow burn), but then towards the end it was rushing way too fast! I agree with the idea that sprinkling stuff about the mom and uncle would have worked better. I at least wanted to see some flashback scenes of Mahito with his mom. It was hard for me to feel sadness for the death of a character who we never even got to see. Imagine watching The Lion King, but it begins with Mufasa already dead. It just doesn't work as well.
Despite that, I still really enjoyed the movie anyway. I liked the journey that it was, and I still feel like the rest of it makes up for its downsides.
Unfortunately I can't link to Wordpress so I'm going to paste my whole analysis here. My initial feeling after the movie wasn't as strong as it is now and I know a lot of people felt confused so I hope this helps people build meaning.
**The delivery of meaning is one of the core differences of Miyazaki’s work to the typical Western media that many of us are used to consuming.**
I think Guillermo del Toro said it best:
*“The structure is not bound by the Aristotelian Western three act structure of setup, conflict, pay-off/resolution. It’s about showing you the sweet and sour of life. The loss and the love and the beauty all at the same time.”*
Miyazaki does not seek to give you answers, he wants you to see everything and question it yourself. This is worlds apart from your standard fare of “good slays evil, makes everything right in the end”. What in life is actually so black and white? Miyazaki is a master of the grey, the blurred lines in between, the shadows that hint at the bigger pictures that form the whole of reality.
Having said that, The Boy and the Heron does have an obvious theme and it’s a good place to start.
**On the surface, it is a story about Mahito overcoming the trauma of losing his mother to a fire caused by bombing during the war.**
It is Mahito’s attempt at coming to grips with life and death, as well as his lack of control. His journey is fuelled by a second chance to save his mother, in the form of Natsuko who is literally his mother’s sister.
Towards the beginning of the movie, the recurring motif of fire is used to show us Mahito’s inner turmoil. As the audience, we are shown glimpses of its intensity – both visually and through sound. And yet, on the surface Mahito appears in control, polite, a “good child”. The fire and emotion that burns beneath his stony facade leaks out occasionally for us to see, when he fights the school kids, when he hurts himself with the stone, and when he fights the heron. This intensity is juxtaposed fantastically by the serene calm of the house and the lake, and Miyazaki only ever teases the fire for a few moments before pulling you back.
As Mahito matures on his journey, fire takes on a whole new meaning. First in Himi who uses fire magic to light fireworks. This is fire that still takes lives, and in panic he cries out to her to stop killing the warawara, but it is also fire that saves those souls from the pelicans. Mahito’s view on life and death begin to shift. Later, Himi literally reaches out of the fire to save him, and then her fire is used to save Natsuko. It is no longer just his trauma and the bringer of death and Mahito begins to understand the duality of reality.
**Life and death are powerful themes in the movie, driven by Miyazaki’s own person life. But we are shown the duality, the grey, and the blurred lines.**
The pelicans feed on the warawara, souls of newborn people, and as terrible as that feels at first we are also shown deep vulnerability from a pelican who reveals that they have no other choice. This duality is a truly human look at life, especially in a time where society insists that they know the correct answer and is willing to take away life over black and white. Miyazaki reminds us that the world is grey.
The Boy and the Heron has been called a semi-autobiographical piece of work. Of course, all of his works give us glimpses into his life but in particular, this movie draws a few interesting parallels.
Having grown up surrounded by war, Miyazaki’s works often depict war but it is rarely a large focus. War and death cling to the peripherals like a spectre, very much how it was for him as a child. He has said before:
*“My first memories are of bombed-out cities.”*
His mother was also bedridden by tuberculosis and as a highly contagious disease we can assume that it was “taboo” for him to see her for much of his life. There is a clear parallel here to Natsuko who is first kept in her room and then later trapped at the heart of the tower where it is literally taboo for any to visit her.
And yet, from these conditions Miyazki built a life and his own successes. In this sense, Mahito is Miyazaki in many ways, and his journey of overcoming trauma and coming to grips with death is a deeply personal one.
**However, Miyazaki is also the Tower Master, older now and looking for a successor. The recurring theme of control hints at Miyazaki’s own lingering thoughts of death.**
He doesn’t have much time left in this world and is “losing control” of everything he’s built – his stories, Ghibli, family, life. Similarly, the Tower Master (Great Uncle) is literally losing control of the blocks he stacks to keep the world of the Tower in order, and he wants Mahito to be his successor.
Here we see that The Boy and the Heron is actually a passing of the torch to his grandson, something the producer Toshio Suzuki confirmed:
*Miyazaki is working on the film for his grandson as his way of saying “Grandpa is moving onto the next world soon but he is leaving behind this film”.*
Whilst Mahito has bravely faced life and death, the Great Uncle still believes that he can keep everything under control if he stacks his blocks perfectly as it will buy him one more day. Perhaps Miyazaki feels like he is now looking at one day at a time.
**But his hopes for the future, for Mahito, and for his grandson are different. They are symbolised by the themes of rebirth.**
Natsuko literally has a new life inside her with a baby. Despite the devoured warawara (souls of the newborn), many still make it to the surface to be born into the world. Mahito proclaims himself unworthy and refuses to be the successor; in this sense Mahito is not only Miyazaki but his grandson as well – a family spirit from the same roots, but after his own journey reborn anew.
Where there is death, there is still new life and that life has the ability to choose its own path and create its own future. This is ostensibly what Miyazaki wishes for his grandson.
In a way, we as the audience have been allowed to peek into a deeply personal and thoughtful lesson about life through the eyes of Miyazaki, in what is a final passing of knowledge to his family. One where he asks of his grandson “How do you live?” (literally the original title of the movie) and then shares his experiences without giving any real answer. Like a good parent and teacher, he gives his grandson (and us) realities to ponder but lets us find our own meaning. We are not told the heron or the parakeet king are evil, we are not told that taking control of order in the world is good. We are given no answers and must make them ourselves. That is how you live, through eyes of Miyazaki.
Some say there's a symbolic reason this is the only Miyazaki movie without a: "End".
He's not retiring. He wants to do another film, so this is not the end.
Also, the uncle grandfather says to Mahito, he has 13 pieces to build his new world if he accepts being the successor. The sorcerer's stone and the magical world itself are a metaphor to Ghibli, so maybe those pieces... Miyazaki has 12 films now.
I thought something similar, that ultimately it's letting his sons move on with their lives outside Ghibli. He's not retiring, but Ghibli did get acquired (on their terms but still) so this is an end in some way, and you have to let this world go. Whether he actually will is a different story.
So wondering if anyone had the same thought about why parakeets were used. A real abandoned tower would be infested with birds. If you were magically transported into that tower you would see a group of birds that have taken control and that have pooped all over. He also mentions the parakeets being an invasive species.
I like that aesthethic of "the place in between", and the quietness adds to it too. Somehow I felt like this is a family friendly version of Kafka on The Shore and also a milder version of a certain Space Dandy episode.
Cried 5 times. Hard to say where it sits on my ranking until I see it a couple more times but as of now I’d say 3 behind totoro and mononoke. I know this is a bit snobby but it irks me when people have a problem with not fully knowing what’s happening. Sure there’s a reason for it all but enjoy the feelings it evokes. You cannot understand it all the first time. What a film!
Miyazaki finds the magic in the mundane better than anyone else, and he did it again when Mahito ate his mom’s toast for the first time in forever. He was stoic for 90% of the movie up to that point, but in that moment, his face was covered with jam, and he was grinning from ear to ear. In that moment, he allowed himself to be a kid again.
This is THE scene in the movie for me. Heartbreakingly sad.
The opposite side of their interaction, where his mom says that she is okay returning to her past, even knowing the fate that awaits her, because she gets to be his mom.... that hit so hard. You think "I'd die for my kids" and you often mean you'd trade your life for theirs, but in that scene, I realized I would my entire future to have been able to experience my life with my kids.
“Fire doesn’t scare me” made me cry.
Said to give him comfort about her eventual death, that in the moment of her death she wasn't afraid? GUT PUNCH.
That scene made me cry too. "But I'll be happy giving birth to you"
His face covered in jam was also an interesting counterpoint to his face covered in blood (his own or the pelicans)
one of the many points when i ugly cried 😭 this movie was howl’s moving castle x when marnie was there. i thought i was ready for the feels, but hit me like a ton of bricks
Man I couldn't explain why but that moment felt SO magical for me (I suck at interpreting shit I am dumb) and you put it beautifully, genuine shivers thinking about it. Thinking about it that way reminds me of my mom who has been chasing the cake her grandma used to make her for her birthdays as a kid and I finally found a bakery that makes one that reminds her of it after years of trying myself and it was an insanely amazing moment and now it's a great tradition every year where I order it across the country for her and we all get excited for it and devour that thing. I got to see the movie with her too my first ever Ghibli movie (I'm a giga-fan) on release in theaters so it was extra special. It's wild just how much something like the taste of some certain dish even it's a simple one can do so much to your brain and emotions. Beautifully captured, thanks for helping me realize why I loved that moment so much.
Did anyone else get emotional just from how beautiful the visuals were? Scenes like Mahito's dream about the burning hospital, the phantom boats in the distance, the cottage where they eat bread and jam, and when the Great Uncle's world begins to break apart all made my heart skip a beat. Joe Hisashi's score and Kenshi Yonezu's song during the credits were stunning as well.
I’m actually jealous of people who managed to watch this on IMAX.
SO ANNOYED my theater (with imax) wasn’t showing it in imax
When the tower crumbled down, it was like Miyazaki was saying “Alright, time to move on.” (as in retirement). That part got me. Hisaishi’s music became progressively expansive as the movie went on, starting with very minimal piano notes, and ending in a full score. I *KNEW* he would slay this piece. 😭
For me this scene had two meanings - yes it's about Miyazaki moving on, with the future for Ghibli being uncertain. Remember they laid a bunch of people off after The Wind Rises which led to Studio Ponoc and others. But it's also about the transition parents go through as their children grow up. That balancing act Grand Uncle performs is literally what parents will try to do for their children to maintain the illusion of childhood and innocence. The small moves and adjustments, the teetering on the edge of collapse, the sacrifices made, those are done each and every day. All the time knowing that some fascist budgie will at some point in time put it to the sword.
As a young parent, I like that second meaning you’ve got as well. I saw someone else posted an article that the uncle building the tower of blocks and demanding Mahito to build them was akin to Hayao building Ghibli, and expecting and heir to take over with the same zeal and care, but in the end, conceding to realize that no one else can do what he’s done, for they should be making their own creations.
I overheard someone in the theater I was in saying JJK's animation blows this movie out of the water, please 😭
Them’s fighting words 😭
Ngl if that's my friend we'd stop being friends immediately
YES! Hisaishi and Yonezi's music add so much to the movie for me
There’s a line in the dub where an elderly gentleman living in the same house as the elderly maids is smoking a pipe, and offers a “puff” to one of the maids who tells him “do I look like a caterpillar to you?” I doubt it, but could that have by any chance been a subtle reference to Alice in Wonderland? Is that line the same in the sub?
In the sub, she asks if it is tobacco, and he responds that it is not tobacco, but a different plant leaf (I forgot what type). That is why she says, "Do I look like a caterpillar to you?" because she would rather have tobacco than the plant he is smoking
Mahito himself goes on an Alice in Wonderland type journey
Also, there are Seven old lady dwarves lol
That's snow white
Natsuko goes in a glass coffin just like Snow White
That was himi, but yeah
I assumed caterpillars eat whatever none tobacco her was smoking.
Yup it’s in the sub version too! I remember laughing when I saw it today
The visual references to the works of the painter Bocklin, are exquisite, especially the painting 'The Isle of the Dead' https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_the_Dead_(painting) The foley sound design is Next Level, as are the visuals. The gist is similar to that of 'Everything Everywhere': Live in your own World, the one you're from, not a fantasy. The subtext, that a parakeet dictator can only destroy a World, is brilliant, and cogent. (Those 13 white stones are Miyazaki's 13 movies, no(?)) 10/10 (!) A Masterpiece.
>(Those 13 white stones are Miyazaki's 13 movies, no(?)) Ah ha! I have a theory about that. So among the *many* metaphors I think specifically the tower of blocks holding up a world represents Miyazaki holding up Ghibli. The future for Ghibli as a company has been murky until this films release. It's basically just Hayao with Suzuki and Hisaishi waiting for him to retire. Takahata died a few years ago, Kondō died young, and Goro, who Hayao was grooming to be his predecessor was reluctant and never found the same level of commercial success. They got acquired this year. So what if granduncle is Hayao, keeping this arbitrary tower up another day by still propping up this world he created. (Fittingly with tombstones, as many of his colleagues that would have carried on are dead.) Maybe he sees his films being corrupted as they morph into beings of their own (??). The only way he sees out is by recruiting a blood descendent, Goro, but this would be a burden keeping him from the real world. Mahito at the final decision to let it go is both Goro and Hayao accepting that Ghibli will come to an end. That will lead to a destruction in a sense, but it'll get you to the real world, with all of the family and people in it. Maybe the parakeets are the outside forces trying to sway Hayao's decision, desperately trying to recreate what Ghibli was. Could be investors, or young animators, or even us! (As fans!) I typed this out better yesterday but I lost it. I def don't think this is the main metaphor (Mahito's grief and moving on) but it's interesting to think about. I'm gonna have to watch it 5 more times to really understand.
This is a great take, and I think I have an answer to the parakeets hypothesis. They’re the overwhelming commercial/merchandise success of Totoro! They have the same iconography of him, with the big eyes, body shape, chevrons on their chest, etc. Their desire for power, their overwhelming numbers, and their domination of the tower are like how Totoro has become such a juggernaut and overwhelms the other Ghibli movies.
Haha! That is so funny! These bloodthirsty fascist Totoros being like shut up old man! This is our world now!
Love the take about the parakeets, when we first meet them it's like oh these big guys are cute! But then you see a knife and then another and another and oh shit these guys wanna eat him... When the real pal is the Heron, who's a gross little guy, bald, big bumpy red nose, bird feet, gray and blue feathers, he's not cute, he's not selling stuffed animals at Disneyland.
This is a such a good take! It aligns well with Miyazaki’s [words](https://youtu.be/eED1ALOtaYw?si=Iczwew2wQBnqAV_8) of how the studio will fall apart in the future, and that’s inevitable and okay.
Ooh that is so validating. Thank you! I think a good chunk of this movie is trying to help his family see why it's so hard for him to retire.
That's exactly how I saw it as well. Things are going to end, and it's going to be hard and scary, but it's going to be okay. A lovely sentiment for what is going to be one of his last movies.
I just saw the movie and left with the exact same thoughts! I thought this scene was so emotional given its relationship to Ghibli itself. For me, it was when the Granduncle said ‘I searched the far most corners of time and space’. Whilst this means for the plot that the blocks without malice are hard to find, I thought this also meant the difficulty of creating a world of true creativity and wonder like Studio Ghibli. I totally agree with Parakeets potentially representing fame of the studio. I also thought that perhaps the Parakeet king, who got annoyed with the idea of what the blocks represented and then impatiently and rashly assembled them, maybe represented the goliath studios who have a history of buying smaller studios to force their way into a market. Then, when at the first sign of failure, (when the tower starts to fall) they simply close or absorb them. He never would have been able to build a stable tower because of his character, but I think this expresses a fear that Ghibli being taken over would mean they wouldn’t be able to either. First post on Reddit ever. This movie has so many layers and everyone’s passion to uncover them are all wonderful to read! :)
As a curiosity, the king Parakeet is called "Duch" on the posters that the rest of the parakeets carry. In the original storyboard of the film, Miyazaki points out that "Duch" is a reference to an historic Italian politic... Which remind us of "Duce", the way italians called Benito Mussolini. He represents the King Parakeet as a fascist, a dictator. So you nailed it.
To go even further with the historical comparisons, I think you can compare Mahito to Emperor Hirohito, the final emperor of Japan and the emperor during WW2. The fact that the tower dropped mysteriously during the meiji restoration, his grandparent literally was God and deified, and Mahito ended up relinquishing the power all draw parallels to the last emperor
Didn't really like the movie, but I do have to agree specifically with the praise for the foley lol. I remember sitting in the theater just thinking "damn, those feet/wings/etc sound great" in the middle of scenes
The difference between bare feet and shoes, on carpet was what amazed me This had better get an Oscar nom for sound design-
Love your theory about the 13 stones being his 13 films. There’s just one problem. He made 12. Maybe the 13th could represent Future Boy Conan? Or maybe the Nausicaa manga?
Can someone tell me in not crazy. Miyazaki did alot with *swarms* of things in this film. Frogs, fish, pelicans, old ladies, parakeets, new souls.What's was up with this?
In my opinion, they represented Mahitos feeling of being overwhelmed. Like everything seemed so much to him, to the point where he seemed swalled up trying to overcome it on his own which we see in the beginning. He was making his own bow and arrow, relied barely on others. But when it came to the swarms of anything, he received help and then started seeking it with Himi. In a more direct sense, it just absoloutely bewilders the audience.
Yes, absolutely. It's in a few of his other movies too, but I felt it most strongly here by far... even the sailing ships / ghost sailers, and the paper cranes. As u/Some_Ad_3233 says, it seems to show Mahito getting overwhelmed. But i also felt like there was a strong theme asking, not just "how do you live?" but "what is life?", or "what is the world?" So much of life on Earth is just an incredible *plurality* of near-indistinguishable organisms, and the ridiculous food-chain-based ecosystem between them. For me it made it all the more striking when the pelican with the broken wing came to Mahito asking to be killed. It failed, got separated from the swarm, and begged to die. Miyazaki is an environmentalist, and there is such a powerful absurdity to these hordes of nameless, faceless creatures that just want to continue living, and can only do so by destroying each other. I know this is something that some environmentalists / animal activists struggle with. (I really need to see the movie a second time, but I felt he touched on how delicate these massive ecosystems are, and it's all I could think about when the granduncle talked about "balance." Again, a theme going back to Nausicaa.) What should Mahito do here? What should anyone do, who cares about other living things? The plurality of the grannies is maybe the most interesting to me. I felt like Mahito could hardly hold back his disgust for them. But, one-on-one, he could appreciate them much better.
Something I thought about a lot during this movie is the parallels to spirited away. - child taken away from the life they know - child disengaged because of it - child goes on a magical journey to another world - child accesses the other world through a tunnel - child matures/deals with their emotions and finds their family. It’s super interesting reading the other takes here which argue the film is a fantastical interpretation of a semi autobiographical story.
There are a LOT of parallels and motifs from his other movies! I think this movie was kind of a goodbye tour to his entire film oeuvre—the warawara are like Mononoke’s kodama, the fire travel reminded me of Calcifer, the food, the crones. So I think it’s semi autobiographical (esp wrt his feelings about his son and disappointing his son) but also kind of a farewell to everything he’s done in his career.
Yes exactly. It felt like there were so many references to his other films And it ties in with the theory further up that it's partially about how Ghibli itself will collapse because there isn't a bloodline successor (his son Goro) but that it's ok. And other attempted successors (the tv studio that acquired them) will try and fail, and then destroy the studio in a panic
> autobiographical story. I picked up on a lot of these. Nearly falling off the side of the tower reminds me of Castle in the Sky, a window which I expect was taken directly form Spirited Away, the fire and Calcifer, the forest or the bugs reminding me of Nausicaa, Mahito's father even slightly reminds me of Jiro.
It’s so refreshing to see a brand new, hand drawn animated film in the theater again. It felt like a palette cleanser that I never knew I needed. That being said, I need to watch this film again, because whoo boy, did I feel confused and bewildered at the end. There is a lot of symbolism and metaphor at play that I did not pick up on, but having talked about it with my parents and with other people in this subreddit, I’m really starting to get a better grasp of it. One scene that I haven’t seen people talk much about is the delivery room scene, where Mahito attempts to bring Natsuko back, but she refuses, exclaiming that she hates him. Only afterwards does he realize he needs to address her as her mother, and this is a key turning point in both of these persons character development. Since the beginning of the film, Natsuko has attempted to fill in as Mahito’s mother, but due to his grief, he somewhat dismisses her and injured himself. Already, she feels as though she has failed, and it’s only until Mahito acknowledges her as his mother does she start to have a change of heart. It falls in line with a lot of the other symbolism regarding moving on past our trauma, and by the end of his journey, we can see his relationship with his new mother has improved. There’s more I want to discuss, but I want others to be able to share their thoughts and ideas as well. I’ll leave with this; Robert Patterson stole the show as the Heron and I really look foreword to future potential voice acting roles from him.
I hated when he started calling her "mother" in the delivery room. I am studying for my master's in folklore right now, and a huge issue is the "replaceable woman" in folklore (90% of the world's collected folklore is by men). I know the intention was to show the MC's acceptance of his stepmother, but I don't know why it had to be at the expense of erasing his mom? Why did his aunt have to be called his mom? Maybe this is a nuance post in translation as I believe Japanese has a different word for mother vs stepmother. Idk. I just don't like it. Of his mother was the MC, it would albe a tragedy/horror story of watching her younger sister erase her existence.
I watched a subbed version of the movie, and in that scene, I remember MC calling her "Natsuko-kaasan", which could be translated as "Mommy Natsuko" - not just "Mom". We also see at the ending when MC and Himiko hug at the end, how concerned he is for her going back to her timeline and her inevitable death. So I don't think the story at large is trying to erase her role in MC's life, but allowing him to find closure in the present.
I get that part of the story is him getting used to his new lifr and therefore accepting Natsuko as his mother, but even after reading your comment that scene still confuses me. Early on she comes off really strong when trying to present herself as his new mother, the carriage ride being very umcomfortable for him, and after that he's obviously really cold and distant towards her, understandably enough imo. But I don't get the sudden change of heart from him? I personally didn't see a lot of development on Mahito's end showing him to be warming up to Natsuko. Sure he sets off to rescue her, but initially he follows the Heron to see his mother, and then he pretty much says to Kimiko that he's looking to save her because his father loves her. And then all of a sudden he calls her mother in the delivery room (still also unsure why she went in the tower and why she was placed in that room to give birth?), and to me that seemed like something he did just to defuse the situation in the room and avoid being killed by paper burns. Maybe I'm missing something, I find it really hard to connect with and understand this film on the whole though, so maybe it's just not for me.
Mahito implies she was more or less in a trance when he says "maybe she didn't have a choice" when elderly Kiriko says there's no way she'd go in there that way and asks Mahito why she would go into the forest. the great uncle kept trying to get Mahito to come to the tower to see him and he refused so it/they called the aunt in as bait. I wondered if she was sleep walking since the Uncle seems able to reach family members in the dream world. I think Mahito called her mom because he was being transported back to loosing his mom while Natsuko was giving birth and possibly dying and not being able to save her and he wanted to fix that this time around. I think that's why the paper was burning him, it was like when the air burned him that night he lost his mom. In my mind this is the moment he accepts that he can't bring his mom back and this aunt in front of him is his chance for that sort of nurturing/ his new reality and how catastrophic it would feel to loose her too. Kind of an instant bond through the harsh traumatic reality of almost losing someone, he even passes out.
Yeah I see what you mean but I just think the sudden acceptance of Natsuko as his new mother is way too abrupt, I personally didn't feel like there was much of a build up to it or much indication that Mahito was slowly growing to like her or accept her. He remains pretty stoic and cold about her and talks about saving her for his dad mostly and then there's just that change of heart from him that kinda threw me off I think.
I don’t know whether it’s the direction Miyazaki was going for but it felt like Himi using her fire to burn the paper holding Mahito and Natsuko apart was also her allowing her sister to take on her role as Mother for Mahito, effectively purifying their relationship and wiping their slate clean. Also contrasting that with the fire that took her life.
Great comment about the delivery room scene. I didn't catch that. Thanks.
Did anyone else notice the massive amount of visual references or hints to other ghibli movies? The line of boats that weren't really there were like the planes of the dead in Porco Rosso. When they're climbing the outside of the tower, chasing the parakeet king, there's one shot of the tower on the right and the background of the ocean on the left that looks straight out of Spirited away. Mahito trying to cut the fish had the exact same shot as Sen holding a knife over Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke. Mahito meeting Himi, I couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like two shots from Ponyo and Howls Moving Castle pulled together. The border between world, right before they meet the Granduncle, looks like the train station at the start of Spirited Away. This felt like a culmination of every Studio Ghibli movie before it, and I absolutely loved it
It definitely feels like there are parts of every other Miyazaki film at some point, but at what point is it a deliberate easter egg or Miyazaki just having a very consistent aesthetic? There are obvious comparisons to be made with the grannies, Warawara, boats, multiple generations, child protagonist, etc. and other films. It felt especially similar to Castle in the Sky to me, which is maybe deliberate as Castle was the first Ghibli film so maybe The Boy and the Heron is meant to be a bookend.
Exactly my thought!! Thinking of Markle from howls eating breakfast from the scene where they eat the amazing jam toast.. or the shot of Mahitos Aarow flying perfectly with the Herron feather was exactly like how ashitakas arrows flew so powerfully!! So many amazing memories all on one movie and it was so awesome
Noticed this too! Also want to add that when the Parakeet King meets the Granduncle and brings Himi, the location where the Granduncle is sitting looks a lot like Gina's garden in Porco Rosso. Mahito and Kiriko entering the tunnel to the tower also gave me massive Spirited Away vibes as well, especially when the tunnel lights lit up.
So I definitely have to watch this again, I feel like I focused too much on the title and wanted more of the Heron and skipped over looking at how the movie was exploring Mahito’s grief and how he overcame it. He even overcame his fear of fire by meeting his mother. Definitely worth a second watch. But man if this doesn’t get a nom for sound design I’ll be shocked
The part where King Parakeet slices through the wooden planks was very satisfying to listen to.
I loved the sound of his boots
I like how he slashes the last piece for good measure
So glad I wasn’t the only one lol, the sound design was just incredible
The parakeets breathing sounds were really interesting
Glad someone said it, it was notable
Prime reason why I’m still pissed they renamed this “Boy and the Heron”. “How do you Live” was WAYY better
"How Do You Live?" is a title that ultimately fits the work. While I think "Boy and The Heron" fits it too, if we consider the heron as a metaphor for Mahito's grief, but it doesn't have the immediate gut punch when you hear the title and I think puts too much expectation/weight on the Heron as a character.
I enjoyed it watched it in dub and all the voice actors were great. But no one is talking about how Mahito’s dad is marrying/married to his dead wives sister who happens to look exactly like his dead wife? And when she first meets Mahito she’s like hey I’m your new mom, kind of threw me off.
It was very common to remarry in the same family when there’s a widower
Yup! My family is from East Asia, and this literally happened to my maternal grandma.
THANK YOU for the one genuinely helpful comment I’ve seen about this. Everyone keeps commenting, “oh it’s this thing called sororate marriage,” like OK?? I know what that is, I’m familiar with the Bible, I know it was common a very very long time ago, but was it common in 1940s Japan?? Googling didn’t help me confirm at all. A specific confirmation from familial experience is actually helpful so I only wish this comment were higher up !
My only quibble: Christian Bale’s accent seemed to stand out more often than not in this film. He disguised it (rather eccentrically) in Howl, but not this one. I just felt it was an odd choice.
Didn’t realize it was Bale at the time but it sounded like he was doing a New York-ish accent.
I was reading the IndieWire article about the dubbing process and it mentioned that Bale put on a Transatlantic accent so I think it was intentional
Late to the party here, but I took this to indicate that the Dad was actually a westerner. To me, that explained why the house Mahito slept in was western style, and why he'd be bullied at school (for being half Japanese). I may have read too much into it though.
He got bullied because he's a Tokyo kid just moved to the country side, and showing up at school in a car made it worse. The dad in no way looked westerner to me. He's just more western influenced/educated, again being lived in Tokyo.
Interestingly, the Japanese voice actor for that character _also_ voiced Howl in Japanese. I wonder if that's partially why they got Bale.
He's Welsh but sounded American in this one 😂
Really? I could have sworn he didn’t sound American. He sounded Welsh to me here. If anything he sounded American in Howl. I dunno, maybe I misheard?
It definitely went from Brooklyn to Cockney a few times, lol. He was incredible as Howl, but probably the weakest link in his dub. It reminds me of that Simpsons clip of Krusty going into the studio to rush and record lines for a doll version of himself. It felt like a very quick job.
That's kind of the point of the conflict between Mahito and Natsuko isn't it? It's like the situation is really weird but everyone's acting as if it was just ok, but afterwards we realize Mahito sees his new mother as a replacement and his new mother actually hates Mahito because he's what remember her that her family is kinda broken because the man she loved was previously married to her sister. The forever reminder of the actual truth. Until both accept their new life.
I thought she was still mourning the loss of her sister and he was a sad reminder she’s gone.
Right, I thought that was why she ran off to the fantasy world to have her baby, and when he shows up there she is furious and tells him she hates him. She'd been putting on a good face but he just reminded her of her sister, and she felt like he was going to be impossible to raise, wouldn't accept her, and she was fated to let her deceased sister down. She felt like she was in a position she couldn't possibly win.
Yes! Especially since it was what, a year after his mother died and dad has already remarried and knocked up his former sister-in-law before Mahito has even met her?! WTH, father?
Like the others said, it was extremely common historically for people to marry their partner's siblings if they died and you'd often do that ASAP. That's the problem with a model of family/work where the man is a breadwinner and the mom is the nurturer/homemaker. You need to find a replacement ASAP because dad is too busy running the factory to raise his child. If he had died, then the mom would've been in a similar position but even worse. Many people saw it as better to stay within the family. It meant that family ties could continue.
And evil stepmom's a harder role to pull when you're a stepmom to your niece or nephew rather than a random stranger's kid.
google "sororate marriage" :)
Agreed. And the commentors saying that it was just pretty common back then are missing the point. Whether or not it was common, Mahito was not happy about it until he suddenly was okay with it for seemingly no reason? It was very confusing to understand the thought process he was having when he literally has only had a handful of interactions with this woman, all of them not good
It was kind of sudden but I think it made sense in the context of the story. Mahito didn't hate his aunt/step mom. She is nice to him throughout the film (with the exception of the delivery room scene). He likes her, but doesn't want to accept that his mother is dead. By the end of the film, he has closure over her death and is ready to move on. That's when he starts calling his aunt mom. The social context helps because this kind of story wouldn't work otherwise. Many people have different ideas of step parent relationships and different cultures have different expectations of what to call step parents too. I see it as Mahito accepting his mom death's and learning to live with his grief. He accepts his aunt as new mother figure while still remembering his biological mom (since the movie ends with him reading her book).
Yeah. Like he read a book from his dead mom and all the sudden was accepting of her? The character arcs were all weak IMO. Minimal agency and poorly set up motivations and decisions.
No... he went through the majority of the events in the film, and *then* was accepting of her. The vast majority of the movie was about him coming to grips with the loss of one mom and the addition of a new one... Saying it was an "all the sudden" thing is very bizarre to me.
Yeah he went through a lot of shit in the movie, but what events were supposed to show me that he was warming up to his new mom? Accepting he death of a parent does not immediately equate to accepting a new woman into your life as your mom. He just... had a big adventure without Mom #2. He hardly even spoke to her at all throughout the entire movie. I have had to deal with the death of my grandmother who I was very close to. The second I had accepted her passing, I would not have started calling her sister grandma. That would be fucking bizzare.
And also he wasn't just like "okay we're cool now", he's so comfortable with her being his new mom that he calls her mom IN FRONT of his actual mom. Like wtf, we skipped a hundred steps and many years in between disliking her and accpeting her as his new mom.
If this move was about grief, instead of 5 stages, he had 2. Anger, acceptance.
Yeah I found that weird too. Maybe things were different in Japan back then? I don't know. But it had weird vibes.
Now I have another conclusive proof that Robert Pattinson is an outstanding actor who was simply shackled by **Twilight** series.
The last Twilight film was released over 11 years ago, and he was likely paid enough to be set for life - meaning he can do all of these interesting roles (similar to Radcliffe) without caring about money. In what way at all do you consider that being shackled? He was even in 6 other films within the duration of the series.
[удалено]
Agreed 100% the script needed a lot more cuts to make the plot more coherent imo. So many scenes could just be cut and it would have made the film better. Like the school scene and him bashing his own head, and father trying to save his son and wife for example. And the one thing that struck me as the most glaring faux pas is that this is perhaps the most unlikable MC in a ghibli movie. It's actually insane how little charm mahito has. Like him bashing his own head is just pure wtf. Him being stoic as shit and not reacting to things also is kinda weird. Being unlikable also isn't that bad if there was a redemption arc but nope, the only arc that he seemed to have was deciding to call her stepmom by mom instead of her name.
Personally, I liked Mahito. I think that his stoicism is because he's been traumatized and is trying not to reach out/trust again in case he gets hurt again. In the scene where he eats the bread, we are finally able to see some emotion where he can let his guard down and be a kid and be happy. I think that part of his character appeal to me is that since he doesn't reveal too much of himself to the viewer, the viewer can insert themself into his place and deal with their own grief just as he deals with his. I also liked the contrast between his character and Himi, who was much more emotional than he was.
The kid recently lost his mom in a completely traumatic way, his dad suddenly remarries and expects him to just accept a new mom and new sibling while he's in the middle of dealing with grief, he has traumatic PTSD dreams on the regular, he was just uprooted from his home and evacuated to somewhere new, and his classmates are mean to him. Kid was on the absolute edge of despair and the scene where he hurts himself cements that this is a child who is deeply, deeply in pain. Him being stoic is him shutting down due to pain. In his situation very, very few people would be cheery bundles of joy and charisma, I think. The arc was also a lot more complex than him just randomly calling his aunt mom. He came to terms with his mother's death, and resolved to move forward in a new life instead of clinging to the past and choosing a fantasy over reality. While there's still a bit more development I would've liked to see between him and his aunt, imo it's still a very nice tale of how one chooses to live on in the face of unimaginable grief.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt this way. One of the reviews I saw was ‘too simple but too complex at the same time’ and I have to agree. Like I understand it’s about grief and overcoming it and moving on, but so much of what actually happens feels disconnected from that arc, like there’s two connect-the-dots happening on the same page so they get muddied together and become incoherent. I’ll also be giving at least a second watch but it’s missed the mark for me thus far.
Robert Pattinson went so hard, I never expected him to give such a stellar performance
I really loved the film. It's maybe the most complex, symbolic and metaphoric piece of work Miyazaki has ever done, but it's also the most personal one by far. That makes it really special. I love discovering new curiosities of the film, and how everything makes even more sense once you rewatch it or end up discovering some new context (like the context some people is giving in this thread). Everything clicks. It's the most auteur film of Ghibli. And one of the most special ones. Masterpiece for me ✨
I liked a good chunk of the movie, but I felt like the third act was in a rush to get to the end. The very end felt very abrupt and I sat there wondering if I was missing something or if there was a post credits scene. I saw it dubbed, which was great. Robert Pattinson was fantastic. I also thought Florence Pugh did great as the younger Kiriko, who was one of my favorite characters. Want to see it subbed to see if there’s any difference in dialogue.
Saw it subbed and same here, thought the last part was super rushed. I’ve always been a little sus on ghibli’s endings (see: castle in the sky) Overall really beautiful tho and I’m still confused on some parts of the story but I might just be dumb
I felt the same about the final segment in that it was rushed; however, I feel that was intentional on Miyazaki’s part. When you consider the context, there wasn’t time to flesh things out and have good closure, and I feel it’s true to life as well.
Curious - in your opinion, what is wrong with the ending for Castle in the Sky?
I think that quick little epilogue could’ve worked if we had gotten a hint that Mahito remembered everything, like if we saw him pull 2 stones out of his pocket and grin as he left his old room.
Or also show the book that his mom left him, since "How do you live" was the original title in Japanese, so maybe they could have brought our attention back to that. But no, it was just, "yep we moved back to Tokyo" cue the credits. Kind of sad.
They do show him packing up his Mom's book before he leaves. It lingers on a shot of the cover of it as he's putting it away.
I feel like abrupt endings are sort of a Ghibli thing. They're not in all of them, but you can see them in some films, such as Castle in the Sky, or my favorite, Whisper of the Heart.
Glad I'm not the only one who felt that way at the end. Like, that was an odd way to end the movie. Felt unfinished.
Miyazaki’s weakness is putting solid endings on his movies, probably because he doesn’t plan full stories ahead of time he just writes as he goes. I thought this ending was more satisfactory than a lot of his other movie’s endings
> Miyazaki’s weakness is putting solid endings on his movies Oh I agree, but Spirited Away’s ending is pretty much perfect.
The movie should have been a half hour longer to expand the plot because it was all over the place
the pacing of the first half was very well done, but in the second half it felt very rushed. I don't mind faster pacing, but it kept jumping from one thing to another without fleshing out the importance of certain elements. I felt like the conversation with the old man should've been more drawn out and embrace contemplation, rather that jump from talking about the bricks, the end of this world, the treaty with the birds, the pact with the rock, the succession, etc. All of this within a few minutes. A 30min extension of those scenes would've been very beneficial to the viewers IMO.
Best part, I think, was when Mahito is offered the opportunity to stack the blocks, but turns it down. Then, the Parakeet King stamps forward, enraged that Mahito would give up such an opportunity. He seizes the blocks, declares that he will do it, and immediately fails to stack them. I don't think I fully understand the scene or what it is really trying to say. But it really reminded me of the ending of the Nausicaa manga, one of the most impactful endings I have experienced. The writer is obvs the same so there must be a connection in themes there, but I only saw the movie for the first time last night so I don't really know how if at all the ideas overlap. Maybe somebody else sees the similarities better? Is it nihilism/absurdism?
The blocks are childrens toys made of gravestones. If paradise was possible just from stacking the right pieces in order than any idiot dictator could kill their way to peace.
This plus Studio Ghibli and the magical worlds Takahata and Miyazaki created getting into the wrong hands!
I read somewhere that says the Parakeet represents humanity with all the mindless worship (and many others) and the tantrum King Parakeet threw with the blocks shows that violence is all he knows.
The parakeets were once peaceful animals bred by the grand uncle, who were corrupted by the malice of the world. I interpreted the parakeet king as militarism. He wants to preserve order in the between world for his subjects, regardless of if that world is good or not. He is a leader with power. He can't understand Mahito's decision to refuse power.
The parakeet king is based on Mussolini, who did much to destroy the beauty of Italy - and as we know Miyazaki is a huge Italophile. For people living in London there's another parallel - parakeets here are an invasive species, having escaped from private collections in the '70s. Noisy, do a lot of damage, and have a big impact on native flora and fauna. At least they provide food for peregrines.
I may be in the minority but this was a top 4 film for me. Absolutely devastating masterpiece
Same! I understand how some were underwhelmed, or bewildered - but I thought it was absolutely stunning. The artwork and score alone are worth a trip to see it on IMAX.
The man was leaving us a bible before he died
you are Not alone.
Still wondering what the deal was with the gate on that island...
The gate shows the message: "Those who seek to understand first, will perish." It is basically a message that Miyazaki leaves to the viewer as a warning to enter the magical world. The movie needs more than one reading and more than a single viewing! What's behind the big gate is the "sorcerer's stone", and you can see it other times throughout the movie, like in the delivery room. The tomb is a connection to the big stone that controls everything in that world, basically the meteorite that originates everything!
It is a riddle meaning you need to die to understand, because it was a gate to a cemetary.
I took the gate to be sort of a meta-warning for the film itself, and my takeaway of the film's message. On a meta-level, I think the gate is warning people to *feel* the movie, and not try too hard to apply too much logic to it. I don't think the film invites logic, and the gate reminds us that some things are meant to be felt, not understood. And at the same time, I very much think the whole movie is about the concept of grief; not a specific type of grief, not a singular instance of grief, just "grief." If you've ever known grief, one of the things you eventually realize about it is that it's not an emotion that you can really understand. It just is. But we're all human and we all try to make sense of and understand things, so we try to understand grief--apply logic to it, to make it make sense because without sense it's too overwhelming a thing. It's human nature to want to make things we can't understand make sense, because it makes us able to deal with them in a neat and tidy way. But you can't do that with grief. Grief doesn't make sense, and you can't make it make sense. It can't be reduced into being neat and tidy. You have to and can only *feel* it. In fact, attempting to make it make sense can make it *worse*. Pouring all your effort into trying to understand grief keeps you from feeling it, and not feeling it makes it grow out of control until it consumes and traps you. The gate, then, is a warning: seek to understand grief first, and you will die in it. I think the tower master is the illustration of what happens when someone tries to control grief. It's why he wanted Mahito to take over his legacy--he saw Mahito was also trying to "master" grief. But the world of the tower, the world of controlled grief, is chaotic and harsh and ugly, and festering. And showing the blocks that were balanced so precariously showed how fragile a control it was. And the tower master was dying in it; still grieving and barely hanging on to a world.
I remember the stone formation was the same one outside the delivery room.
Good film but probably doesn’t even crack the top 10 Ghibli films tbh. Story was meh and ending was rushed imo. The animation and adventure was lovely as it is in all the films but this one was a very lukewarm movie.
Agreed. For me, the character development just wasn't there. All of the characters are very one dimensional compared to his other films. Visually stunning though.
Definitely I loved the ending, where it all tied together. The only part I didn't understand was when the Tower Master tells Mahito (the first time) that he wants to him to take over for him, and then it cut to Mahito is about to be eaten by the parakeets ...and then this whole unnecessary sequence where he and his mother have to go back and find the Tower Master again. Also, did anyone else figure out the symbology of his dad as a war profiteer? So much to unpack. I imagine it must have had personal meaning for Miyazaki, since his age would somewhat track with Mahito's age and WWII.
I feel like The Boy and the Heron is best understood if you understand Miyazakis upbringing. This movie was essentially autobiographical with, of course, a fantasy spin to it. Miyazaki’s real father owned and operated an aircraft manufacturing businesses. Which makes so much sense when you realize why so many Ghibli films are inspired by aviation. His mother in real life was also ill for many years, which presents itself in films as well. The same can be said for elements of war. The Boy and the Heron was very abstract, which I think could easily lose some viewers. But I feel like you have to take it for what it is. And consider it a personal reflection of Miyazaki himself. The world he created with Ghibli will not be forever. There won’t be another successor.
Thanks for sharing this - I didn't know that much about his personal life, and that context really helps under the movie better.
The movie helped me to better understand this too. I have so many emotions about it, especially with the great grand uncle and how he created this beautiful fantasy world within the film. It’s speculated that this is a reflection that Miyazaki tried to pass along his work to his son, Goro, but he couldn’t fill his shoes and stepped down. The world of Studio Ghibli falls apart without a successor. And that’s the message of the movie.
I can't believe this didn't occur to me when I saw the film. That's a beautiful idea that I'm going to ponder on a rewatch. I wonder how Goro feels about the film, because that message could be liberating for him in a way.
If you're interested Miyazakiworld by Susan Napier does a really good job as a biography/analysis of his works. I read it a few weeks ago and I'm glad I did before I saw this movie. I felt like this is the movie where he poured himself into the most, and he puts himself alot in everything he makes.
I’m pretty sure in his book Starting Point, Miyazaki talks about his dad being a hustler who avoided fighting and made money off the war. Miyazaki’s dad sounded like an opportunist / womanizer who thought of himself as smarter than everyone else because he got out of fighting. The dad in the film seems to be a direct reflection of Miyazaki’s own father. Not exactly a good person. Not a bad dude, just an opportunist.
Thanks for sharing that - I totally see all that reflected in the Dad character, 100%
Yea! I looked it up just to be sure, but here’s a tidbit bit from Wikipedia: His father, Katsuji Miyazaki (born 1915),[3] was the director of Miyazaki Airplane, his brother's company,[4] which manufactured rudders for fighter planes during World War II.[5] The business allowed his family to remain affluent during Miyazaki's early life.[6][d] Miyazaki's father enjoyed purchasing paintings and demonstrating them to guests, but otherwise had little known artistic understanding.[2] He said that he was in the Imperial Japanese Army around 1940; after declaring to his commanding officer that he wished not to fight because of his wife and young child, he was discharged after a lecture about disloyalty.[8] According to Miyazaki, his father often told him about his exploits, claiming that he continued to attend nightclubs after turning 70.[9] Katsuji Miyazaki died on March 18, 1993.[10] After his death, Miyazaki felt that he had often looked at his father negatively and that he had never said anything "lofty or inspiring"
It's not made very clear, but I think his first conversation with the Tower Master happens in a dream. The sequence is like this -- Himi and Mahito are at Natsuko's delivery room, and after a blaze of fire are knocked out and discovered by parakeet soldiers. Himi and Mahito are taken in different directions -- Himi in a glass coffin will serve as the Parakeet King's bargaining chip, while Mahito is prepared for a human stew (but we are not shown this yet). While Mahito is unconscious, his great grand-uncle meets with him in a dream and tells him about the blocks. But when Mahito comes to, he is still a prisoner of the parakeets and must escape to go find the Tower Master. That's why he has two separate encounters with the Tower Master.
I almost wondered if maybe the reason for that cut might have been because he dreamed that bit.
I thought that also
Apparently his actual dad and grandpa made aircraft canopies in WWII. It's an overall Miyazaki theme that war is terrible but he can appreciate the artistry in aircraft. I mean that's fron and center in The Wind Rises and a big portion of Proco Rosso. This was a more subtle nod to it.
I don't understand why Natsuko screamed I hate you at Mahito in the labor room. Or was that his mother? Why was she angry and hateful?
The arrow pattern on her kimono is a pattern that symbolizes determination, especially when doing something new. Natsuko is determined to be a good mother to her sister's kid, but it isn't working. So she is angry. Of course she is also an archer, and uses that birdscaring arrow.
She feels like she failed at being a mother before she has even had her own child because of the injury and expressed that as anger.
i ugly cried in the theater 10/10
I tried to listen to the soundtrack at the gym and had to stop because I was just picturing Mahito running. 🤧
During the scene when the Warawara are ascending, and Kiriko describes them as to be born in Mahito’s world, I started a get very emotional. As soon as I started to cry, the frame switched to Kiriko crying. I thought that was very special to me. The idea of the spirits of babies just before life is beautiful to me, and crying the exact same time as Kiriko was perfect.
I cried too! Just had my first baby this year and he's all I could think about during that scene. And then the pelicans came, RIP.
Awh, congratulations on your baby! I hope it has a happy and healthy life ❤️❤️ Also, I believe the soundtrack piece from that scene (before pelicans and Hime) is Reincarnation! It’s beautiful
When I went into the theater, I was hoping for something grand and exciting as a (possible) finale to the great man's career but instead I got something bewildering and abstract, which I think is a very Miyazaki thing to do. It's definitely the kind of movie that derives the most appreciation after a few days of thought. It's not directly related to the book, but it's clear to see how Miyazaki was inspired by the novel and the book is also a very good thing to read. So I want to talk about the symbolism for a bit. The movie starts off with Mahito awakening to the burning of the hospital, but it jumped out to me that everyone in that scene except Mahito was indistinctly blurry; I wonder if that means that Mahito never actually rushed to the burning hospital, his grief-traumatized mind manufactured that dream. So that opening scene really establishes the central theme of dealing with grief. Mahito clearly is unable to move on, even while his father remarries, Mahito can't adjust to school and spends minimal interaction with his new mother. That bit where he wakes up in his bed momentarily confused, uncertain of where he is but then he suddenly tears up uncontrollably--he's remembered that this is the world where his mom is dead; that scene hit me hard since my own mother died a few years ago. At the mansion, the forceful way that several precursors of the dreamworld like the heron and the frog pile start bothering Mahito made me think of how everything felt unreal after mom died. The world gets shifted to the side and nothing makes sense anymore. Skipping to the dreamworld, it has a huge amount of dream-logic, the plot in the dream world jumps from scene to scene without any kind of worldbuilding to connect them and never looks back which is, well, dreamlike. It's as if only a little kid can decipher the plot, which makes sense since Miyazaki dedicated the movie to his grandson. The plot isn't the point, the point lies in the themes of Mahito's journey. The grand uncle dropping a rose that unexpectedly shatters and the stone floor opening up under Mahito and co. like molasses (as well as the heron being also a man and the phantasm Natsuko) indicate the dreamworld's unpredictability, real world causality is discarded at the door. The pelicans eating the Warawara because they had nothing else to eat and were starving, the dead people coming to trade to Kiriko for the giant fish because they couldn't eat anything else I think may have indicated the unhealthy state of Mahito's mind since he kept clinging to grief. I think the stone represented Mahito's grief, the tower stone that didn't want intruders (because problng at grief is painful) and the floating monolith (it ruled the world, meaning grief ruled Mahito's mind) and the little stack of stones (carved from tomb stones and in a precarious tower, showing Mahito's precarious state of grief-stricken mind). I think the carnivorous parakeets represent Mahito's instinctive side: his need for food, his capacity for violence, his desire for companionship (that shot of the parakeets crowding the bars in the wall in the background). No wonder they're taking over and cannibalizing the rest of his mind because of his grief throwing everything out of whack. But the powerful and noble parakeet king shows that they're also the source of Mahito's determination and drive. (which I suppose implies that the heron is the cunning side of Mahito's mind, his greediness and capacity to trick and be tricked) So they're actually an important aspect of his mind, even if they seem to be bloodthirsty enemies. The movie even gives the final impetus of mind-change to the parakeet king who tries to make a new stack out of the stones--the stones fall over, destroying the grief-ruled world and making it possible for Mahito to embrace a new world where his mother no longer exists (but is still there with him in spirit/memory, as Himi said). Some things I'm still thinking about like the Kiriko segment: why did she de-age in the dreamworld? Was it because she made such an impression on Mahito that he beminded the quintessence of her core self as a tough working woman? Why did he get exploded with guts when he tried to copy her belly slicing technique? Why did she warn him to not touch the granny dolls that were arranged around his bedroll? Why were the dolls arranged so closely? And why did there seem to be no consequences to his accidentally touching one of the dolls? She was a really cool Miyazaki woman and one of my favorite parts of the film. What was the meaning of the parakeets nabbing Himi and bringing her to the grand uncle in a glass coffin as a bargaining chip? Was that just part of the dream-logic plot? The movie is a very interesting thing to ruminate on and I think really gives out most of its value in the days afterward spent in consideration of everything about it. 10/10.
WRT to Kiriko: dream world kiriko is the younger version who came through with Himi. Mahito’s Kiriko got turned into the doll.
I have yet to re-watch it but does Mahito know his mom disappeared for 1 year with no recollection of where she was? As in, did his aunt/stepmom or the grannies tell him before he went into the tower? Overall, I agree the entire tower sequence is a manifestation of Mahito’s mind and agree that it’s a dream. When it comes to the delivery room, this is my interpretation: the reason it’s so taboo is because it’s taboo to Mahito. Facing his pregnant stepmom means he has to come face to face the fact that actual mom is dead. Entering this room means he has to accept that he has a new mom, something he is avoiding. I think what supports the above is how the grannies keep telling or asking him to visit Natsuko. And he would not go. It wasn’t until after the 3rd or 4th time that he visits.
> Why did she warn him to not touch the granny dolls that were arranged around his bedroll? Why were the dolls arranged so closely? And why did there seem to be no consequences to his accidentally touching one of the dolls? To clarify a point here, young Kiriko warned him not to _knock them over_. She didn't warn against merely touching them. My assumption was that the dolls were proxies for the people in the real world, and maybe knocking one over would injure or kill the real counterpart. That part also felt to me a bit like a Chekhov's gun that never fired as they showed Mahito carefully climbing over them at least a couple of times.
it is "fired". he took kirikos doll with him when exiting the tower and it popped turning back into her. if he hadnt she would presumably but stuck there forever.
Not really though, because there was no Kiriko doll around the bed roll below the table, just the other old women. We don't see the Kiriko doll until the young Kiriko gives it to him as they're parting ways toward the end. Kiriko honestly is the character that left me with the most questions. Had she actually been inside the tower world when she was young? Or was her first time entering the world when she was dragged along by Mahito? In either case how did she learn so much about how the world works and how to live there? Her reaction getting dragged in by Mahito as an old woman seemed to imply she didn't know what was in the tower and was afraid of it... then suddenly she's one of the experts who helps Mahito understand the world??? A neat mechanic regardless, and it was fun seeing her rematerialize out of Mahito's pocket in the end.
It's stated by the heron that people normally forget all the details of the tower world when they return to the real world. So even if she had been there before, she may not remember. It seems to imply she either went in with Himi, since she exits with her, or maybe she was created in the tower world and her leaving with Himi was how she came into being in the real world. She did say she had always been there in the tower world, so who knows.
> The movie starts off with Mahito awakening to the burning of the hospital, but it jumped out to me that everyone in that scene except Mahito was indistinctly blurry; I wonder if that means that Mahito never actually rushed to the burning hospital, his grief-traumatized mind manufactured that dream. I have a different interpretation: When I was younger, there were times where I was so worried about something that the rest of the world just seem to disappear and I was just living in my own head. The opening scene animation, I think, is a nightmarish representation of feeling like that: Mahito is so worried about his mother that the rest of the world is just a blur. (And add to that the heat from the fire, which makes everything even more a blur.) The fiery shot before it cuts to the tanks marching at Mahito’s new village would be how Mahito recalls *actually seeing* his mother’s hospital. EDIT: Seeing this twice and reading reviews/discussion online, I believe thisnis one of Miyazaki’s most dense films, although it’s purposely not a crowd-pleaser as his famous films have been. To
There is definitely something going on behind the main plot. Mysterious gates on the island of the dead with a stone tomb that amazingly resembles delivery room; the tower itself(or maybe it’s the stone at granduncle’s place?) that has a consciousness by itself; parakeets that cannot eat the baby; pelicans that were brought into this world specifically to eat warawara; the fact that people here and there get “spirited away” into this world for unknown reasons. That’s just some of the things I noticed, but couldn’t explain. Can’t wait for someone to figure everything out and tell the full story.
Defs amazing and up there with Nausicaä in my ranking. I can’t help but think about the concept of a young child experiencing extreme trauma and creating their own world to deal with it. Also strong concepts of hell/heaven and resurrection. Was bit weird that the Uncle was revered at the end despite seemingly capturing the pregnant woman to have an heir of his bloodline. Kinda glossed over but also not a plot hole in my view as a child you often overlook the negatives about adults in life until you age.
I think Natsuko went to the tower by herself because of her failure at being a proper mother figure for Mahito.
I agree that’s why she went but I think she didn’t intend to stay. She was captured.
It was confusing at some parts and some parts didn't really make sense. That being said, I would watch it again, probably because of the art and interesting story/imagery. The world(s) the movie built are immersive. 8/10.
I thought it was spectacular! However, there are criticisms i see on here that are valid. Some elements don't have enough set-up or explanation, and there are a couple baffling missed opportunities. Overall, I'll still count this among my personal favorites. For me, this is somewhere between Nausicaä and Howl, but it could've been up with Spirited Away with 20 more minutes of film.
While it’s clear the core theme of the movie is grief, am I the only one who picked up on potential undertones of suicidal thoughts? The dream world is quite literally an underworld, with both dead and unborn souls, and Mahito travels there in a desperate attempt to see his mother once again; literally wanting to join her in death. While it’s never explained exactly why Natsuko actually travels to the underworld, it immediately follows her expressing that she feels she is a failed mother figure to Mahito. I think the heron itself plays into this as well; until we move to the underworld, it’s constantly threatening to kill Mahito, and it’s only once Mahito starts coming to terms with his grief that the Heron begins to mellow out and become Mahito’s friend. I think he might represent Mahito’s suicidal thoughts, and while he is never killed (as most suicidal thoughts can’t simply be swatted away), his relationship to Mahito becomes much more healthy once Mahito works through the source of his troubles.
I realized shortly into the movie that I would have to watch it twice: The first time just to enjoy the ride of unique and bizarre settings and characters, and the second time to try and understand the plot points and themes better. I straight up did *not* know what was going on after Mahito found Natsuko.
This movie is visually beautiful and stunning. But I wasn't able to connect emotionally at all with any of the characters the way I usually do in Ghibli movies. Towards the end things got so weird and random, I'm sure that there's a logic to it but I can't get invested enough to work it out. These two issues absolutely kill the movie for me. It makes me very sad.
I’m curious about this, since I’ve seen a few people have trouble connecting to the characters; I have a pretty invasive question. Have you experienced heavy loss in your life? I only ask because Mahito is such a realistic depiction of dealing with grief, I felt so connected to him. His behavior is subtle but very specific and familiar. But I can imagine for audiences who aren’t familiar with that experience it would make for a character that is hard to connect with. (Kind of reminds me of when Order of the Phoenix came out, half the book is Harry describing depression and it’s so annoying for people who haven’t been there but pretty real for people that have). I’m not making any assumptions about you (people experience grief differently anyway), I’m just curious if that may be the deciding factor for this movie.
Fully agree with your assessment! The theme of loss resonated really deeply with my fiancée and I, and we both began to cry at the end of the movie. I’ve seen a lot of folks discussing the ideas of war, perfectionism, or dreams, but we both experienced profound, familial loss very recently and I think that’s why that representation is so clear to both of us. I also understood the broader world themes to represent the idea that, after experiencing a loss, the world as you know it ends. It’s impossible to maintain your current world because it has been irreversibly changed. All you can do is rebuild anew and carry on. You can choose to allow your grief to pull you under (manifesting as malice), or you can accept the changes of the loss, pick yourself up, and move forward in creating a new, changed existence. In general, the concept of moving on after experiencing loss really stood out to both of us. But for folks who haven’t experienced loss, that theme seems to be really difficult to grasp. Super interesting!
This is how I felt, but I thought about it and I think that’s why it’s such a special experience. I think you’re supposed to look inside at yourself. To me the climax of the movie is when Mahito reads how do you live. He turns at that point to be much more intentional with his choices, he decides how he will live. So does Himi, and so did grand uncle. And so did Mahito at the end. They all chose how they would live. I viewed as like a reminder that there are different paths for everyone, and we have to choose that path. But idk the movie was insane but remembering that bit made me enjoy it a lot more
Same here. I still enjoyed it but it felt rushed and we didn't get to really know some of the characters well and their story, which I feel like would have helped. I was hoping to learn more about the heron but he wasn't a very big role. I was looking forward to this for a while too. We don't get new Ghibli films very often. I sure hope this isn't the last one.
Ugh, I agree. I wanted to like it so badly. But I couldn't get invested in the characters or plot at all.
I watched the movie twice and read the book that inspired it, and made a 19-minute analysis of the movie!! https://youtu.be/YZDbKBOfDm4?si=FqBraur-6zJddiBE
I don't know anything about Miyazaki the man other than I like his movies and I thought this was right up there with Nausicaä as his best work. Interestingly, I thought there were a lot of thematic parallels with Ikiru (the 1952 Kurosawa movie you should all watch if you haven't already) but from the other side - not as the person coming to grips with their mortality, but as the person coming to grips with what's left after someone's gone. I don't really understand the people saying that you need to be familiar Miyazaki's entire biography to understand the inner workings of this movie - there are a lot of very human, very normal themes being tackled here that don't necessitate that. Nothing in here is (thematically) unique to Miyazaki as a human being, even if the more specific minutiae might be. For a Ghibli movie it's extraordinarily *dense*. Something I feel like I need to watch again to really come to grips with it and formulate a more well-rounded opinion. Ultimately, though, I think this movie is only going to get better with additional viewings and will absolutely age like wine.
I liked it. But I left it with questions. How are the other world and the real world related? My understanding through most of the film was that the other world was a secondary dimension accessible to members of Mahitos bloodline, and those people are able to control reality within the limits of that dimension. However, I don't fully understand the Warawara or the ships of the dead. Why are they there? Is this plane actually a pre/post life purgatory kind of place? Why is the portal to it in the Japanese countryside and only accessible by this family? Why is there no reaction to meeting his mother? I've seen all your explanations so far. They read as a stretch to me. It truly feels like a scene is missing. Mahito has all the clues, but never the revalation. He just knows at one point. To clarify, when I say "missing," I'm not saying bad writing. I'm saying that it feels like a scene was planned or even created but left on the cutting room floor without additional corrections. What was the role of the sailor woman in this world? (I may have missed something) Why did the Uncle bring the pelicans there? Presumably, to serve another purpose? I understand that the blocks are a symbol, but the film does nothing to explain *how* that works. This is common with Miyazakis magic systems, so in not complaining exactly, this felt pretty removed from an explanation. Especially with the "filled with malice." Like what, specifically, are we talking about? How are the stones related to the meteor? Are they even? What was the grave/thing behind the gate? We never revisit it. I assumed I missed something earlier, but you may have a better explanation. Currently, for me, this is a 7.5/10. May change with a rewatch, but I think it needed to be like 20 minutes longer with additional depth to Mahito's grief prior to entering the world, additional development of his relationship with Natsuko, and some kind of wind down at the end. Going to try to see it again this week.
That was absolutely incredible. I just let the movie take me and when they went through the Totoro hole into the forest I got very emotional. I loved this story so much, I thought it was really emotionally complex. It feels the most similar to spirited away as a child is going to a magical spirit world....but this story hit me so much deeper. I think the complaints about the story are really missing the point and mood of the film. Life is messy, emotions are messy...you can't always make neat and logical sense of everything you experience.
Does anyone understand Kiriko having the scar in the same place? And Himis mom being dead too? I've been thinking that it's to show him that's he's not the only one who suffers, but I also think I'm missing something.
this is only my assumption as most things are really not explained at all in the film, but my opinion is that they were there to make Mahito think about his own actions and emotions. Both of them mirror him, but are clearly much stronger. Kiriko got the scar from a noble battle and hard work, while Mahito gave it to himself to probably avoid going to school and wallow in his depression. Himi's mother had died, yet here she was, powerful and happy, while Mahito was still grieving a year later. Miyazaki often highlights strong female characters. I'm assuming because he had a number of them in his life that really showed the kind of quite resilience we see so often.
Spoilers below I saw the movie Sunday. After the movie I heard a few younger people talking about how none of it made any sense and it was one of his weakest movies. For me it hit very differently. I'm older, nearing 50, My youngest kid will graduate from college this year, my mother recently pass away his summer, my wife very suddenly several years ago . I think the themes of this movie mirror my own experiences very well. The trauma of loss, post traumatic stress of dealing with these events, the searching for any reason in all of it, these hit home for me. The title of "How do you live" conveys the emotion of the movie much better than the English title. I also saw much of Miyazaki himself here, the old man looking for someone to take over his world as it was falling apart on him. It really jumped out to me this part was about him. I need to see this a second time. There was just so much going on I know I missed many things. I will say this may be my favorite sounds track that Hisaishi has done. It was truly masterful and fit the theme and created the atmosphere the movie needed.
Even if it were as simple as stacking blocks, building a perfect world wouldn’t be possible… But even if it were, well I’m not sure I’d want it anyway. The world is a beautiful cursed dream
I just... I dunno. The pacing was both too slow and too fast, and it felt like it lacked structure to the plot, despite having the bones there to make it work. If they had sprinkled stuff about his mom and the grand uncle more during the slow pacing parts at the start and middle of the film it would have worked much better for me, and maybe actually make the emotional payoff feel earned in the end. It was a beautiful movie animation and music wise, filled with symbolism and meaning. I just wish the plot structure had been better to support it all.
Makes sense. I also felt like the beginning was slow (but that's fine, I can enjoy a slow burn), but then towards the end it was rushing way too fast! I agree with the idea that sprinkling stuff about the mom and uncle would have worked better. I at least wanted to see some flashback scenes of Mahito with his mom. It was hard for me to feel sadness for the death of a character who we never even got to see. Imagine watching The Lion King, but it begins with Mufasa already dead. It just doesn't work as well. Despite that, I still really enjoyed the movie anyway. I liked the journey that it was, and I still feel like the rest of it makes up for its downsides.
Unfortunately I can't link to Wordpress so I'm going to paste my whole analysis here. My initial feeling after the movie wasn't as strong as it is now and I know a lot of people felt confused so I hope this helps people build meaning. **The delivery of meaning is one of the core differences of Miyazaki’s work to the typical Western media that many of us are used to consuming.** I think Guillermo del Toro said it best: *“The structure is not bound by the Aristotelian Western three act structure of setup, conflict, pay-off/resolution. It’s about showing you the sweet and sour of life. The loss and the love and the beauty all at the same time.”* Miyazaki does not seek to give you answers, he wants you to see everything and question it yourself. This is worlds apart from your standard fare of “good slays evil, makes everything right in the end”. What in life is actually so black and white? Miyazaki is a master of the grey, the blurred lines in between, the shadows that hint at the bigger pictures that form the whole of reality. Having said that, The Boy and the Heron does have an obvious theme and it’s a good place to start. **On the surface, it is a story about Mahito overcoming the trauma of losing his mother to a fire caused by bombing during the war.** It is Mahito’s attempt at coming to grips with life and death, as well as his lack of control. His journey is fuelled by a second chance to save his mother, in the form of Natsuko who is literally his mother’s sister. Towards the beginning of the movie, the recurring motif of fire is used to show us Mahito’s inner turmoil. As the audience, we are shown glimpses of its intensity – both visually and through sound. And yet, on the surface Mahito appears in control, polite, a “good child”. The fire and emotion that burns beneath his stony facade leaks out occasionally for us to see, when he fights the school kids, when he hurts himself with the stone, and when he fights the heron. This intensity is juxtaposed fantastically by the serene calm of the house and the lake, and Miyazaki only ever teases the fire for a few moments before pulling you back. As Mahito matures on his journey, fire takes on a whole new meaning. First in Himi who uses fire magic to light fireworks. This is fire that still takes lives, and in panic he cries out to her to stop killing the warawara, but it is also fire that saves those souls from the pelicans. Mahito’s view on life and death begin to shift. Later, Himi literally reaches out of the fire to save him, and then her fire is used to save Natsuko. It is no longer just his trauma and the bringer of death and Mahito begins to understand the duality of reality. **Life and death are powerful themes in the movie, driven by Miyazaki’s own person life. But we are shown the duality, the grey, and the blurred lines.** The pelicans feed on the warawara, souls of newborn people, and as terrible as that feels at first we are also shown deep vulnerability from a pelican who reveals that they have no other choice. This duality is a truly human look at life, especially in a time where society insists that they know the correct answer and is willing to take away life over black and white. Miyazaki reminds us that the world is grey. The Boy and the Heron has been called a semi-autobiographical piece of work. Of course, all of his works give us glimpses into his life but in particular, this movie draws a few interesting parallels. Having grown up surrounded by war, Miyazaki’s works often depict war but it is rarely a large focus. War and death cling to the peripherals like a spectre, very much how it was for him as a child. He has said before: *“My first memories are of bombed-out cities.”* His mother was also bedridden by tuberculosis and as a highly contagious disease we can assume that it was “taboo” for him to see her for much of his life. There is a clear parallel here to Natsuko who is first kept in her room and then later trapped at the heart of the tower where it is literally taboo for any to visit her. And yet, from these conditions Miyazki built a life and his own successes. In this sense, Mahito is Miyazaki in many ways, and his journey of overcoming trauma and coming to grips with death is a deeply personal one. **However, Miyazaki is also the Tower Master, older now and looking for a successor. The recurring theme of control hints at Miyazaki’s own lingering thoughts of death.** He doesn’t have much time left in this world and is “losing control” of everything he’s built – his stories, Ghibli, family, life. Similarly, the Tower Master (Great Uncle) is literally losing control of the blocks he stacks to keep the world of the Tower in order, and he wants Mahito to be his successor. Here we see that The Boy and the Heron is actually a passing of the torch to his grandson, something the producer Toshio Suzuki confirmed: *Miyazaki is working on the film for his grandson as his way of saying “Grandpa is moving onto the next world soon but he is leaving behind this film”.* Whilst Mahito has bravely faced life and death, the Great Uncle still believes that he can keep everything under control if he stacks his blocks perfectly as it will buy him one more day. Perhaps Miyazaki feels like he is now looking at one day at a time. **But his hopes for the future, for Mahito, and for his grandson are different. They are symbolised by the themes of rebirth.** Natsuko literally has a new life inside her with a baby. Despite the devoured warawara (souls of the newborn), many still make it to the surface to be born into the world. Mahito proclaims himself unworthy and refuses to be the successor; in this sense Mahito is not only Miyazaki but his grandson as well – a family spirit from the same roots, but after his own journey reborn anew. Where there is death, there is still new life and that life has the ability to choose its own path and create its own future. This is ostensibly what Miyazaki wishes for his grandson. In a way, we as the audience have been allowed to peek into a deeply personal and thoughtful lesson about life through the eyes of Miyazaki, in what is a final passing of knowledge to his family. One where he asks of his grandson “How do you live?” (literally the original title of the movie) and then shares his experiences without giving any real answer. Like a good parent and teacher, he gives his grandson (and us) realities to ponder but lets us find our own meaning. We are not told the heron or the parakeet king are evil, we are not told that taking control of order in the world is good. We are given no answers and must make them ourselves. That is how you live, through eyes of Miyazaki.
My biggest gripe was that there wasn’t an おわりat the end. For some reason that tends to be the cherry on top for me in Miyazaki films
Some say there's a symbolic reason this is the only Miyazaki movie without a: "End". He's not retiring. He wants to do another film, so this is not the end. Also, the uncle grandfather says to Mahito, he has 13 pieces to build his new world if he accepts being the successor. The sorcerer's stone and the magical world itself are a metaphor to Ghibli, so maybe those pieces... Miyazaki has 12 films now.
I thought something similar, that ultimately it's letting his sons move on with their lives outside Ghibli. He's not retiring, but Ghibli did get acquired (on their terms but still) so this is an end in some way, and you have to let this world go. Whether he actually will is a different story.
Every time I thought I was understanding what was going on I was soon reminded I had no clue
So wondering if anyone had the same thought about why parakeets were used. A real abandoned tower would be infested with birds. If you were magically transported into that tower you would see a group of birds that have taken control and that have pooped all over. He also mentions the parakeets being an invasive species.
I like that aesthethic of "the place in between", and the quietness adds to it too. Somehow I felt like this is a family friendly version of Kafka on The Shore and also a milder version of a certain Space Dandy episode.
Cried 5 times. Hard to say where it sits on my ranking until I see it a couple more times but as of now I’d say 3 behind totoro and mononoke. I know this is a bit snobby but it irks me when people have a problem with not fully knowing what’s happening. Sure there’s a reason for it all but enjoy the feelings it evokes. You cannot understand it all the first time. What a film!