“The Boy and the Bird” by Hayao Miyazaki: a new film by a Japanese director
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A new work by Hayao Miyazaki, the great Japanese master, who 10 years ago, after “The Wind Rises,” seemed to have retired, is being released in Russia, but still returned – to give the world one of his best films. “The Boy and the Bird” is an adult fairy tale that intertwines the root motifs of the classic. Colorful, extremely serious and at the same time comforting, this work is capable of putting on a wing everyone who is going through difficult times today.
In the third year of World War II, little Mahito’s mother dies in a bombing fire. A year later, his engineer father Shoichi decides to marry again – the choice falls on Natsuko, his mother’s younger sister and almost an exact copy of her – and then transports his son from Tokyo to the province, where Shoichi awaits an important position at a military factory that makes glazing for fighter planes. Mahito’s new life is full of surprises: firstly, immediately upon arrival he learns that his stepmother is expecting a child, secondly, his mother’s new, or rather old family house is filled with the strangest old ladies, and thirdly, he lives on the river in front of the house A very annoying and rather scary heron with human teeth. She pesters the boy with screams that the burnt mother is supposedly alive. Curiosity leads Mahito to follow the bird to a mysterious tower built by his great-great-grandfather in the thicket adjacent to the house, and then straight to the other world, where birds reign and there are more dead than living.
“The Boy and the Bird” is the twelfth full-length work of the great Hayao Miyazaki, which is released 10 years after the premiere of “The Wind Rises.” In 2013, “The Wind,” which intertwined Miyazaki’s love of flying, Japanese history of the first half of the twentieth century and the motifs of Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain,” the author called his last, solemnly announcing his retirement. Now Hayao Miyazaki is 82 years old, and I still want to call the new film “The Boy and the Bird” not his last, but another masterpiece. The film was released in its native Japanese distribution quietly, in the summer, and without much advertising or promotion, armed only with a poster, it collected about the same amount as “Cheburashka” in Russia – almost $60 million – taking fourth place in box office receipts in 2023.
“The Boy and the Bird,” despite its fantastic, fairy-tale setting, like most of Miyazaki’s works, cannot be called a children’s story. It is no coincidence that in Russia, as well as throughout the world, “The Boy and the Bird” is released with an age rating of 12+. Very little ones can be frightened by a heron-man with a strong healthy set of teeth, by giant parrots chasing a boy to eat, with knives and plates at the ready, and, for example, by a scene in which a flock of pelicans devours a bunch of white and plump people living in a wonderful land.” Varavara” (don’t ask – all the answers are in the movies).
Miyazaki is not concerned with self-censorship; in his world, the terrible inevitably coexists with the beautiful, and miracle reconciles with tragedy. We’re used to it. Perhaps it is fair to say that his new work will not reveal any secrets and is unlikely to surprise those who have long followed the life and creative journey of the master, but it is absolutely one of the best films of such a complex and long 2023. “The Boy and the Bird” is an elegant and wise commentary on the wartime of another era, a time when one so wants to take refuge in dreams and fantasies – although the dream world is already bursting at the seams under the hurricane wind of history. “Two years after the end of the war, we returned to Tokyo” – this phrase sums up the film, and for those who remember exactly how that war ended, they probably won’t find a better one than “The Boy and the Bird”, the antipode to another important film of the year – Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” who was reproached precisely because there were no Japanese in it.
However, Miyazaki himself, of course, is focused not on the lessons of history, but on much more global issues that are relevant at all times. He tells his viewer about the difficult search for oneself and acceptance of one’s, alas, inevitable finitude, about the futility of attempts to eternally preserve one’s heritage. The final collapse of the fantasy world, which the heroes of the film will survive, but not the one who built and developed this world, of course, sets the mood in a minor way: Miyazaki really has no heirs. Nobody will make movies the way he makes them. The stakes are too high. However, other creators will be able to find in his works at least inspiration to create their own art that is in no way similar to his works.
They say that Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov—I would like to see him as the ideal viewer of this Japanese film—has a gray haired creature who, in moments of bright sadness, turns to the classic with the words: “Sasha, I am a crane.” The author of “The Boy and the Bird” expects approximately the same from his heroes. Sometimes, in order to maintain dignity and help others, you need to have the courage to abandon yourself. So don’t be surprised by a heron who dresses up as a parrot to give Miyazaki’s audience a chance to remain human.
In theaters from December 7
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