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Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron (2024)

Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron (2024)

PG-13

hbo max

Faced with one death after another, the Ghibli master channels his grief into creating his latest (and possibly final) film

7.3

Movie

Japan
Japanese
Documentary
2024
KAKU ARAKAWA
Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Kenshi Yonezu
121 min

TLDR

Literally, a labor of love.

What it's about

The documentary closely follows Hayao Miyazaki and the Ghibli team as they create the award-winning film, The Boy and The Heron.

The take

At first, you wonder, couldn’t this behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Boy and The Heron just be a DVD special? But a few minutes in, it becomes clear how rich the material is. It’s not just about Miyazaki and the making of a movie, it’s about him grappling with grief and transforming it into art. A surprising chunk of this documentary is about death. Miyazaki’s friends and colleagues are passing away, it seems, every month, and the only way Miyazaki can mourn and honor them is through his (their) art. The Boy and The Heron itself is a fulfillment of a promise Miyazaki made to his closest friend, Isao Takahata, or Pak-san, as Miyazaki lovingly calls him. It’s Pak-san whom he mourns the most in the movie, but almost everyone who’s passed makes an appearance both in the documentary and the film. The lines between the two are often blurred by Miyazaki, in his failing memory, and by documentary director Kaku Arakawa. Arakawa’s editing is chaotic, if not experimental. He cuts between reality and fiction—documentary footage and Ghibli clips—faster than you can make sense of it all. “I opened my brain way too far for this project,” Miyazaki claims, and you can feel the exhilaration and fear in every second of this brilliant film.

What stands out

It’ll never not be funny how such a cynical guy as Miyazaki is the source of some of the most whimsical creations in cinema.

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