Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron; or, the Return of Metaphor to the Box Office

I give my best attempt at a spoiler-free breakdown of why Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron is the exact film we collectively need right now.

There are times when I look at the film industry and am nothing but frustrated. The upper echelons of the industry are stale, over-saturated by the same basic ideas and intellectual properties, and plagued by a distinct lack of artistry. It's not the fault of the filmmakers, the actors or most of the people involved with the creation of said works. Instead, it lies in the system itself, which, like many other industries based in the west in the last thirty years, has taken a hard shift away from marketing to audiences and instead marketing to shareholders. 

The same can be said for the music and publishing industries, among others. In film, there are very few companies who have any control over what's released and the runaway success of superhero movies in the late 00s and early 10s pushed them to consolidate their interests into endless deluges of IP stuff. Either it's an established IP, or an attempt to establish a new long-running IP that they can wring every last valuable drop out of before fatigue destroys its viability at the box office. 

We, as moviegoers, have been told what to enjoy by limiting our options in the theaters. Yes, there are still cool movies being made, although many end up direct-to-streaming after award qualifying box office runs, if that. If I pull up movie times for the nearby theater tonight, I'm given a deluge of sequels, a few re-releases, a few horror flicks, and an actual few movies that don't fit into Hollywood's narrow vision of the box office. That's not normal, though. Not now, at least. 

Pursuit of runaway box office success will almost always be a losing battle, but something happened this weekend that gives me pause. Hayao Miyazaki's latest (and perhaps final) feature, The Boy and the Heron, won at the box office. Now, look, it's not a massive opening, but it's the largest opening of its kind and beat out the struggling Marvels, the latest Trolls, the debuting Hunger Games prequel, and new Godzilla movie. 

What’s important about that, though, is that The Boy and the Heron isn’t just a good movie. It’s a great movie.

In fact, it's incredibly easy to call it a masterpiece. 

I've seen mild trepidation among the typical film discussing public, who feel it to be too "samey" as his previous work, beautiful but lacking in content, or anything else. I'm here to tell you, don't listen to that. Don't listen to this work being "impenetrable" or too strange, because it's not. Instead, it's a work masked in metaphor, to the point where it's unlike anything else that we get in theaters anymore. 

A two-hour long animated feature that is told almost entirely through metaphor is making a splash. Because people are ready to see something different again. Ready to give themselves to not just wonder and fantasy, but metaphor. If you were to attempt to explain or understand The Boy and the Heron without engaging in analyzing metaphors, the movie itself would fall apart. The artistic intent layered into this movie is nothing short of staggering and masterful. 

There was so much to unpack from this movie, which contains a ton of autobiographical material from Miyazaki's own life, mashed together with the Japanese novel How Do You Live?, which I haven't read yet but now fully intend on reading. But it's just so vibrant and full of life, even when it's centered on the concept of grief and how it can fester, distort our reality and force us to make strange decisions, it remains optimistic and so full of life. It's also about art itself, and the process of creating art and finding a calling. If you've followed Miyazaki's career, you know there are repeating themes throughout his work, from the love of aviation, moving to the countryside, dealing with loss and finding a great sense of purpose in life. All of that is present here, and it's beautiful. 

The world needs more art like what Miyazaki creates. Well, hold on. Scratch that. I know there are people making fantastic art like that already out there. What the world needs is more of us staying curious and open-minded, which means seeking out new and challenging art and entertainment. Because "voting with our dollars" means nothing anymore. When Warner Bros. and Mattel had a certified hit on their hands with Barbie, the immediate response wasn't "wow, making big budget movies that appeal to women is a good idea," instead it was "WE NEED A MATTEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE." 

Giving these people money is not going to ever send the right message. Find cool art and support it. If you watch movies, there are plenty of indie and international films and places to find them. If you read, there are thriving indie scenes out there filled with smart, well-written books just as good as the ones the major publishers are pumping out, if not better. For music, you can find a whole new world of awesome music on Bandcamp, etc. 

You gotta do some digging, but it's worth the effort to support artists and their endeavors over the industries that have no interest in art or the betterment of our collective beings, but only lining the pockets of themselves and their pals. Go see this movie already. I’m going out of my way to not divulge too many details about this or ruin anything here. For good reason, too. Because you should see this and experience it for yourself.

The best kind of art makes us think and can help us heal. This is one of those cases and we all need art like this.