The Boy and the Heron

and a few other things

I think Norman Lear waited for Henry Kissinger to croak first.

My grandfather, who died when I was seven, chewed a cigar and resembled Archie Bunker so closely that I often conflate the two in my memories, though the only thing I remember him saying is “Yabba Dabba Do!” He drove a truck for a quarry, and imitated Fred Flintstone for me when I was a toddler. I’m still a big fan of animation, and I’m glad I could see The Boy and the Heron, the latest film directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli, in a theater.

My introduction to his work was actually in a video game. His first movie was The Castle of Cogliostro, a Lupin III thief story; the movie was cut into a laserdisc arcade game called Cliff Hanger, which I played at a pizzeria as a young tween. That, Galaxy Express 999, and G-Force, aka “Battle of the Planets,” was my introduction to anime; I caught a fan-subtitled showing of Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind at a science fiction convention, and I was hooked on Studio Ghibli.

Miyazaki’s style resembles watercolor, and his stories are about humanity working with or against nature, the spirit world, or both. The Boy and the Heron is no exception. Perhaps the most harrowing film the studio has released since Princess Mononoke with its war between forest spirits and a warlike village, this one begins during World War II, when a tragic hospital fire tears young Mahito’s family apart. This eventually sends him to a remote village to grieve and recover. The story is about many things, but it is first about grief and loss.

The mansion is served by seven grannies who resemble the dwarfs in Disney’s first epic; there Mahito meets his father’s new pregnant wife. Some time has passed, but grief has affected how we perceive it. The passage of time is mentioned casually by Mahito, like this is from a diary found once he is older. His father is wealthy and works for the war effort, running a factory that builds parts for fighter planes. This makes him unpopular at school; rather than be bullied, Mahito hits himself in the head with a rock so he can stay home.

It’s not all as bleak as it sounds. A strange heron has been following and watching Mahito since he arrived. And there’s a ruined tower in the forest that the grannies don’t want him to explore. These both are much more than they seem, and lead to a fantastic adventure in an otherworld as Mahito faces his grief, and his resentment of his father’s new wife, and learns the history of the strange tower and mansion. There’s a lot to think about, though the threads of the story are not as tightly woven as they could be, and some characters seem to rise to prominence suddenly.

While not perfect, and far from the masterpieces of his prime, The Boy and the Heron is still very beautiful and engaging, full of fantastical imaginations, and it is always gorgeous to watch. It reminded me how tiresome it is, demanding that every scene be in loyal service to the plot, or written in visual shorthand to appease stunted attention spans. Some scenes are just whimsical and beautiful, and set a pace where we are expected to sit quietly and take it all in.

I could have spent more time on the fishing boat with Mahito and the fisherwoman; that section reminded me of what Ghibli’s disastrous adaptation of Tales from Earthsea should have been: a story about Ged on his boat. In the end, The Boy and the Heron is about its creator, as we meet the Lord of the Tower, who questions what he is built, and decides to whom he should bequeath it. Hayao Miyazaki has said this is his last film. He has given us more than enough to remember him by. It’s not a bad film to go out with.

It’s a film worth seeing in theaters. I saw it in XD at a Cinemark theater, which is not quite IMAX, but has a larger screen and sharp digital projection. I’m glad it was chosen for that format, as it made for a beautiful presentation.

Another dreamlike movie I watched recently was Electric Dreams, which called itself a “fairytale for computers” when it was released in 1984. I loved it then, and I can’t not love it now. It’s so whimsical and innocent. A young architect trying to design an earthquake-proof brick buys a personal computer and home automation system; after he connects it to his employer’s mainframe and spills champagne on it, the computer becomes sentient, and falls in love with his neighbor, a cellist played by Virginia Madsen. The computer is voiced by Bud Cort through a lot of filters, and the film is by a music video director so there are a lot of montages and animated sequences set to music, but it all feels like an old musical, or even Xanadu, in the best of ways. The AI story Her by Spike Jonze is incredibly similar, but he claims to never have seen this movie. It even has a happy ending. It’s on the Criterion Channel until the end of the year, and I highly recommend it. The soundtrack is fantastic (Culture Club, Giorgio Moroder, UB40, Heaven 17.)

Another strange but fun computer film is Teknolust directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson. In it, Tilda Swinton plays a computer scientist and DNA researcher who has cloned herself digitally; her clones are supposed to die off, but find their own way to survive in their virtual world and in ours. It’s sexy and silly and fun. Also on Criterion, along with Crimes of Passion, a Ken Russell film starring Kathleen Turner as a sex worker with a secret identity, stalked by Anthony Perkins, a raving priest with a killer dildo. It’s so much more than that, a Technicolor Times Square satire slashed with suburban marriage malaise; a security snooper with a dead sex life at home is hired to spy on Turner, and falls in love with her, giving it all a quasi-David Lynch and Douglas Sirk vibe, all set to a great Rick Wakeman soundtrack. Is it great? Hell no, but I couldn’t stop watching it. It’s certainly never boring.

Bookwise, I really enjoyed The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin. I read it a few weeks ago, and it’s still with me. She’s brilliant at creating worlds that feel like parallel dimensions which continue to exist alongside our own in my mind, long after I put the book down. Earthsea is real, as far as I’m concerned, and exists somewhere in a shared subconscious. The “Hainish cycle” as some call it, of her stories set in a future where humanity exists on several planets, may not have been conceived as a future in our timeline, but it’s believable enough for me, that it reads as history that hasn’t happened yet. Left Hand of Darkness is in that universe. An envoy from a confederation of human planets lands on a new one, to ask them if they’d like to join. But the culture, which at first seems quite familiar, is very different. The people of Gethen have no fixed sex, and can be both mothers and fathers, depending on their sex during a cycle. Le Guin crafts a gripping story of intrigue and friendship between Genly, the envoy, and Estraven, a counselor whose motives seem unclear until we, and Genly, begin to understand the culture. And by then, they are in an adventure worthy of Shackleton and the Endurance. It’s one of those books that’s difficult to explain in a short amount of words not because it’s overly complicated, but because it has so many layers, which you don’t need to unravel to enjoy. If you “don’t like science fiction,” no worries. Ursula K. Le Guin doesn’t read like science fiction.