I want to preface this by saying that I've never seen a Miyazaki movie (or Studio Ghibli movie for that matter), so there's no possible way I could be biased. At all. I try to keep an open mind whenever I watch a movie I haven't seen before. I know that Miyazaki movies are very unique and sometimes pretty weird, but weird's a bit of an understatement here. The story follows Mahito, a boy who lost his mother in a fire and moves to the Japanese countryside with his father following her death. There, they meet Natsuko, Mahito's new mother, and go to her house where they meet the Heron for the first time. Mahito starts exploring almost immediately, and after sent to school for one day, bludgeons himself with a rock to his head to make it seem like he got in a fight in order to get out of going to school again. Mahito's a real one for that. But, due to his injury, he's forbidden from leaving his room and is kept under a watchful eye by Natsuko's maids (?). Despite this, Mahito is able to sneak away from them in time to find his way into an Alice-in-Wonderland-type world that allows him to face his mother's death and finally get over the events that occurred more than 3 years prior. Like last week, I'm going to start actually reviewing by saying what I liked about this movie. And I like this movie a lot. I said earlier in this blog about how this movie's pretty weird, but I'm a huge fan of movies that express themselves in weird and unique ways. It's the most creative way I've seen anyone portray grief and how the protagonist overcomes it. It takes a deep dive into the mind of Mohito as he tries to confront his mother's death and his inability to save her. Of course, you can't talk about a Ghibli movie without talking about how beautiful it looks. Every single frame is drawn and animated with a quality that's second to none, and every single shot looks gorgeous. My favorite part of this animation style is how they animated the fire. Throughout the movie, Mohito antagonizes the fire as the thing that took away his mother. He remembers how the flames nearly engulfed him as he tried to reach her, but was unable. This feeling is recreated with the way that the fire is drawn. It fills the whole screen and is drawn with a very hostile energy that's easy to pick up on and helps the viewer connect more with Mohito. If nothing else, Ghibli completely mastered the art of animation with The Boy and the Heron. Now, let's talk about what I didn't like about this movie. I've mentioned how much I love weird movies, but generally those movies have a pretty rigid structure. The Boy and the Heron, however, does not have a definitive structure. I heard my English & film teacher say that Miyazaki sort of writes these movies as he goes along, and this movie's very telling of that. The main plot can be understood, but it's tied pretty loosely together. At one point in the movie, it's difficult to remember why Mohito even ventured into the other world in the first place, because at that point it seems like he's just trying to escape and not find Natsuke. I like this movie a lot, but I think that if they spent a little bit more time defining and refining the actual story into a more cohesive narrative, it'd just work better in that regard. I've got one last thing I want to bring up that I didn't necessarily like or dislike, and that's how the movie ended (this is usually the part in an AP DBQ that gets you the complexity point.) At the end of the movie, Mohito refuses to follow in his great-grand-uncle's footsteps, and leaves the world to crumble behind him. In doing so, he saves Natsuke from the malice in that world, but destroys lives. But, he's also defining his own future. Rather than do what was laid out for him, and rather than live in a world that could truly be all-good, he takes the more difficult option and lives in a world that finds balance in the chaos of good and evil, and I think that's noble. 8/10
1 Comment
Luke
2/5/2024 12:00:40 pm
Yeah if this movie was a DBQ imma give it like a 2. No evidence, Ill give it context, and outside evidence.
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