Film Review: The Boy and the Heron 蒼鷺與少年 (2023) Japan 🇯🇵
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia 🇦🇺)
Billed as the ultimate finale from the legendary Hayao Miyazaki, “The Boy and The Heron” is simply a legacy and a masterpiece that transcends thru time, space, love, death and humanity. It’s the ultimate Miyazaki film that will leave the audience questioning, thinking and pondering about our own existence on Earth and beyond. That’s the beauty of cinema and the world of imagination that can bring us thru a timeless era of space and a world that tests our own feelings, reality and everything we know. This is why, “The Boy and The Heron” will become a masterpiece and ones that will grow beyond the test of time and generation.
To say, that this film generates a nostalgia feeling will be an absolute understatement as this is the ultimate film from the master of Japanese animation. It is simply magically as we storm thru different worlds, reality and who we truly belong, whether it’s the world we tend to exist in or a different space of time. Good movies make us question about the world, and great cinema leaves a legacy behind, this film has it all, and you have to watch it once, twice or many more before that depth goes into our soul and minds.
All in all, “The Boy and the Heron” is not for children, it’s disguised for children, but rather a fairytale for the adult minds. For a film to truly break the boundaries of time and space and whilst creating a legacy for the master of cinema and animation in the truly unique manner that Hayao Miyazaki manages to bring it to the big screen. This is what magic really is. Watch it, endure it, believe it and more important go on a life journey with it.
I rated it 10/10