geezer cinema: the boy and the heron (hayao miyazaki, 2023)

My 11th Miyazaki movie, and I still haven't seen one that was bad ... well, I wasn't a big fan of his first (The Castle of Cagliostro), but it's all been smooth sailing since. While each of his movies are distinctive, I repeat myself when I write about them, because his movies are recognizably his ... they are different from each other, yet unmistakably Miyazaki. It's not that he's an example of the old auteur theory; he doesn't repeat little bits of work that call back to earlier movies. To give an example of what I mean, many (most? all?) of his films include little creatures which tend to be adorable, tend to get in the way, tend to charm the audience ... but they are different each time. There's the black blobs in Howl's Moving Castle (which, now that I think of it, aren't particularly small or adorable), the white thingies with heads that crack sideways in Princess Mononoke, and my favorites, the soot thingies from Spirited Away. Totoro is enormous, of course, but he's a lot like those little creatures. And, to quote myself, Hollywood is capable of creating special effects that cause your jaw to drop, but Miyazaki creates special effects out of his brain. I spent a lot of The Boy and the Heron imagining the kind of person who could create such a movie.

Watching The Boy and the Heron, I found myself regularly in awe. I kept moving my head to see everything (and we weren't even watching the IMAX version).

And perhaps the most telling aspect of the movie, at least in terms of my appreciation for Miyazaki's work, is that while I loved it just as much as the above indicates, I think if I made a ranked list of his movies, The Boy and the Heron would be, oh, fifth-highest at best. I think any of his movies would be good as a starting point for new viewers (maybe not The Castle of Cagliostro), but I suppose Totoro is the most iconic way into Miyazaki's world. I still think Mononoke and Spirited Away are his best, but I'm just splitting hairs. Hayao Miyazaki is one of the greatest film makers of all time.