Watching The Boy and the Heron (君たちはどう生きるか)

The Boy and the Heron (君たちはどう生きるか) premiered in Japan last Friday, but instead of watching it, I went to watch The Quintessential Quintuplets∽ which also premiered the same day. You can't really blame me, since no one knows what The Boy and the Heron is about, with no trailer nor advertising. It felt like a cheap trick by Studio Ghibli to make people watch the film using curiosity.

But in the end, curiosity got the better of me, and I went to watch The Boy and the Heron today. However, I refused to pay for a movie that I know nothing about, so I used the points I accumulated at the nearby cinema (watch six movies and you get to watch a free one).

The movie is 124 minutes and I came out of it with really mixed feelings. I am quite sure that director Miyazaki Hayao had a message for viewers, and it probably goes along the line of "do not escape into a perfect world that you build, but learn to live bravely in the real world." The animation was also Ghibli quality and serve as a work of art on its own. At the same time, the story is difficult to follow with many of the concepts and background unexplained. I am quite sure I even dozed off during the movie because I was so lost by the different fantasy world settings all thrown into a big mixing pot, leaving it to the viewer to unravel.

 

While metaphors can be a great way to help tell a story, like everything else, moderation is key. Excessive use of metaphors (or anything, for that matter) can have the opposite effect.

If you ask me whether I would watch the movie again, frankly, I think I would not, unless someone comes up with a super-interesting discovery about the movie that requires me to watch it again to ascertain for myself. Or if I need a way to fall asleep (although it could be a bit rude to sleep in the cinema).

 

At the end of the day, The Boy and the Heron could well be Miyazaki Hayao's way of showing that hardcore fans will watch and praise anything made by him, Goro's haters will love anything made by Hayao, and movie critics will say anything to show that they are the only ones with the intellect to see the true meaning in a film, even when the director himself doesn't understand it.

You can find my deeper look into The Boy and the Heron here, although it will contain spoilers.