Reality, obliteration, and (un)certain futures in Miyazaki’s ‘The Boy and the Heron’
Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film explores reality itself as a constructive and destructive force on our bodies, lives, and psyches.
There is no shortage of merchandise of beloved Ghibli characters—from playing cards to bean bag chairs, you could easily outfit a house, if not an entire life, with products that remind you daily of cozy scenes from your favorite Hayao Miyazaki films. Studio Ghibli movies seem to often inspire this feeling, of wanting to bring the magic from the film into our everyday lives, to not forget the emotions brought on by the film. Similarly, scenes from The Boy and the Heron remained in my mind for many days and weeks following my viewing it. But rather than stir up feelings of whimsy or fondness for the recent film, I often felt oppressed upon remembering it, or paralyzed by dread when thinking about the film’s opening and final scenes. There is something different about Miyazaki’s latest film. It is shocking in a violent way. In a horrifying way. In a haunting way.
None of this is to say Miyazaki’s films have always been purely whimsical and innocent in their content. My Neighbor Totoro contains obvious references to nuclear war. Howl’s Moving Castle contains elements of time distortion due to the traumatic effects of ongoing war and violence. Many of Miyazaki's other films are about the catastrophic nature of human greed and development. What makes The Boy and the Heron different from his previous is his treatment of reality itself as a corrupting force on the film’s characters and ostensibly the “you” in the Japanese title of the film How Do You Live (i.e. us, the viewers).
Let us begin with noticing a unique facet of the entrance to the “magic world” or “dream world” in the movie: it is an entrance. In other Ghibli films, magic spirits coexist in the same world as humans or can move freely between their world and the human one. In My Neighbor Totoro the Kusakabe sisters, after Mei first ventures into the forest and encounters Totoro, encounter spirits of the forest throughout their daily lives in their small, bucolic town. In Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, humans actively fight against fantastical life forms from nearby forests as they seek to expand or solidify their civilizations. Even in Spirited Away, where the spirit world must be accessed through a portal, the spirits in the said world interact with the everyday one of humans; Haku, the spirit the protagonist Chihiro frees from enslavement, is the spirit of a river in the human world that rescued Chihiro from drowning when she was younger. The borders between these worlds, if in existence at all, are malleable.
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