The Boy and the Heron (2023)
There's a particular kind of pressure that surrounds a film like this. When a director of Hayao Miyazaki's stature comes out of retirement, again, to make the film he's apparently been building towards for decades, the weight of expectation is immense. The Boy and the Heron carries all of that on its shoulders, and the remarkable thing is how gracefully it bears it.
The setup is a beautifully melancholic one. While the Second World War rages around him, a teenage boy named Mahito is uprooted from Tokyo following his mother's death in a fire and relocated to the rural home of his father's new wife. He's grieving, withdrawn, and furious at the world in the way that only a boy who hasn't yet learned how to process loss can be. Into that raw emotional space steps a persistent, mischievous talking grey heron, who takes a peculiar interest in Mahito, declaring him the "long-awaited one." It's a premise that grounds the fantastical immediately in something genuinely felt. This is semi-autobiographical territory for Miyazaki, and you can sense it. The emotion doesn't feel constructed. It feels remembered.
And visually, my word. I'll say it plainly: this might just be the best-looking Ghibli film ever made, and that is not a sentence I type lightly. I've loved hand-drawn animation my entire life, and I hold a firm belief that it captures something alive and breathing that computer-generated imagery almost never manages to replicate. Every frame here looks like it was painted with genuine love and intention. The backgrounds are lush and vibrant, the character movement fluid and expressive, and the stranger, more surreal sequences that open up as the story progresses are genuinely breathtaking to sit with. If you've ever doubted that traditional animation could compete visually with anything being made today, this film is your answer. The voice performances, too, are wonderful across the board, bringing warmth and texture to a wonderfully strange cast of characters.
Now, I'll own the mixed feelings, because they're real. The narrative isn't quite as tight or as relentlessly gripping as the films that sit at the top of Miyazaki's canon. Compared to Spirited Away or Howl's Moving Castle, the pacing here is more meandering, and the world-building, spectacular as it is, doesn't always click together with the same satisfying precision. There are moments in the second half where the logic of the fantasy world feels slightly beyond reach, where you're admiring the imagination on display without quite being able to grab hold of it emotionally.
But here's the thing. I don't think that's entirely a failure. In many ways, The Boy and the Heron reminded me most strongly of My Neighbor Totoro, which also trades high-stakes adventure for something quieter and more internal. It shares that same gentle, profound focus on childhood grief, on the strangeness of adjusting to a new world when the old one has been torn away from you, and on the way magical creatures can offer a kind of comfort that other people simply can't reach. It's a film less interested in plot momentum than in emotional truth, and if you go in expecting the former, you may come away slightly disappointed. If you let it work on its own terms, it's deeply moving.
What strikes me most is that Miyazaki, at his age, with everything he's already given us, made something this personal and this uncompromising. He wasn't making a crowd-pleaser. He was making the film he needed to make. You feel that in every frame. Whether it reaches the narrative heights of his absolute best is a fair debate to have, but its visual ambition, its emotional sincerity, and its sheer craftsmanship are beyond question.
Four stars. Not quite the summit, but still a view most filmmakers could only dream of.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2026-07-10
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · HBO Max
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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