The Boy and the Heron

Here's my silly little brain cells trying to figure out something about Mark Hamill and some sort of time travel?

 

Movie: The Boy and the Heron

Running Times: 2:04

Nominated for: Animated Feature

How I watched: AMC A List

When it had me: Beautiful Animation, I love birds!

When it lost me: Maybe I don't love this bird?

What systems does it challenge: I really don't know anymore

 

I used to shy away from Miyazaki. The world loved him and I just didn't get it. But I worked really hard on becoming a better person and now I am happy to report, I am able to enjoy many of his films. So I was excited to enjoy this one. And I did for about half of the film. Then I got lost and bored and I missed my cats and wanted to go home.

So what went wrong? Early on I was captivated by the beautiful imagery, in particular the nature aspects. Birds and hillsides, vistas and gorgeous water. So lovely and meditative! The wild characters were fun and I was invested on joining a boy on his quest. 

The metaphors for dealing with grief and grappling with identity in adolescence and the struggle for new beginnings were powerful and poignant. I was enjoying new worlds that opened up along the way. 

However, at some point the rules of the world became over burdensome for me and the whole thing tumbled like a house of cards. Like, one minute I was deeply enjoying the film and the next I was completely confused and done. I don't know how it fell apart so fast but suddenly the goals of the character were unclear to me, the metaphors no longer made sense and I felt like I couldn't even connect it to the movie I started out watching.

This is based on a well known book in Japan so I'm guessing that part of the problem was trying to fit so much of a written story into a two hour film. It tends to over complicate things. I've made great strides in my life but I still only got half of it! Oh well, room for improvement.

The big question: Does this win because Miyazaki is getting old or does the award got to Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse? Probably this one.