TORONTO, ONT – The loudest applause on opening evening on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition was for Totoro.
When the Studio Ghibli emblem of the magical creature from Hayao Miyazaki’s “My Neighbor Totoro” appeared on the screen Thursday night, it meant to the audience the premiere of Miyazaki’s latest and perhaps last film, “The Boy and the Heron.” For many at TIFF, it was the movie event of the year.
A decade ago, Miyazaki, the anime master of “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Kiki’s Supply Service” and “Ponyo,” stated he was retiring from movie and that 2013’s “The Wind That Rises” could be his final movie. However Miyazaki, now 82, quickly after started slowly toiling away on yet another. For Miyazaki, who painstakingly crafts hundreds of hand drawings for a movie, it is a lengthy and laborious course of.
His work has been shrouded in thriller, partly as a result of Miyazaki very not often does interviews. Plus, in a advertising and marketing rarity, “The Boy and the Heron” has been launched in Japan with none of the same old promotion — no TV adverts or billboards — that accompanies such a feverishly awaited film. (It’ll open in North American theaters Dec. 8.) A number of of Miyazaki’s movies rank among the many greatest box-office hits ever in Japan; there are few different filmmakers as we speak as revered — and fiercely beloved — as Miyazaki.
“We are privileged enough to be living in a time where Mozart is composing symphonies,” the filmmaker Guillermo del Toro stated Thursday, introducing the movie’s first screening outdoors Japan. “Miyazaki san is a master of that stature.”
Miyazaki, who did not journey to Toronto, has himself lampooned his lack of ability to totally step away. In journal excerpts shared within the movie’s press notes, Miyazaki writes: “There’s nothing more pathetic than telling the world you’ll retire because of your age, then making another comeback.”
“Doesn’t an elderly person deluding themself that they’re still capable, despite their geriatric forgetfulness, prove that they’re past their best?” he adds. “You bet it does.”
The title of Miyazaki’s newest is “Kimi-tachi wa Do Ikeru Ka?” in Japanese, which interprets as “How Do you Live?” It comes from Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel, on which the film is loosely primarily based. In one among his few public feedback, Miyazaki was requested if his movie would provide any solutions to that query.
“I am making this movie because I do not have the answer,” Miyazaki told The New York Times in 2021.
What may surprise some is that while there’s much wisdom and reflection in “The Boy and Heron,” it’s just as infinitely imaginative as Miyazaki’s earlier films — a dazzling odyssey in the vivid mold “Spirited Away.” It’s both the wistful swan song of a great filmmaker and the boundless work of an ever-young creative mind.
The main character is Mahito Maki (voiced by Soma Santoki), a 12-year-old boy who, in the film’s opening WWII-set scenes, loses his mother in a Tokyo hospital fire. It’s not long after that his father marries Mahito’s mother’s sister (Yoshino Kimura) and, on the country estate they have moved to, Mahito’s bitter and grief-filled life is interrupted by a gray heron (Masaki Suda) that won’t leave him alone.
Not unlike Satsuki and Mei of “My Neighbor Totoro,” Mahito is led down a wooded path and into an enchanted realm entered by way of a stone tower constructed by Mahito’s grand-uncle. We’re once more, invited right into a dizzyingly colourful otherworldly fantasy of Miyazaki’s making. It could be rife with metaphor — for nature, for grief, for therapeutic — however it additionally exists within the pure and unfiltered dimension of dream.
“The Boy and the Heron” can be a convoluted place, but many will recognize countless hallmarks of Miyazaki, albeit with a particular avian atmosphere this time. Yes, there are birds — not just the heron but florid flocks of parakeets. There are fiery hearths and glowing orbs, gobs of bloody organs and malicious actors who threaten the stability of this verdant but under-siege paradise.
There is also a elderly granduncle with a long beard nearing the end of his life, aware that his ability to hold this crumbling world together is receding. Does he need an heir? Will it all collapse? For Miyazaki, who once said the purpose of his films was “to fill in the gap that might be in your heart or your everyday life,” “The Boy and the Heron” is ultimately about letting the kingdom go.
“Build your own tower,” the granduncle tells Mahito.
If this is to be the last Miyazaki movie (it would be unwise to ever really count him out), it’s a tremendously moving goodbye. There is no legacy burnishing here but a gentle plea. Dream your own dreams. Create your own worlds. Build your own towers.
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Observe AP Movie Author Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
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