From the supposedly retired animation auteur and Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki (Academy Award-winner “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle”) comes “The Boy and the Heron,” a hand-drawn fantasy with autobiographical elements. Like “The Wind Rises” (2013), Miyazaki’s announced valedictory effort, “The Boy and the Heron” invokes World War II. In fact, the action begins when the film’s protagonist Mahito Maki (Soma Santoki) sees his beloved mother burned to death in a hospital in an attack on Tokyo.
Some time later, Mahito’s father Shoichi Maki (Takuya Kimura), a factory owner, marries his late wife’s younger sister Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura), who becomes pregnant. They then all move to the country to a lavish house on a hill near a river. A big grey heron seems interested in the newly-arrived boy, who injures his head with a sharp rock after getting into a fight with his new classmates. Near to the house is an old tower. Mahito and one of the old maids from the country house enter the tower in an attempt to find Natsuko, who has disappeared inside. The grey heron (Masaki Suda), which can talk, offers to guide Mahito and lead him to his dead mother.
A variation on a theme of “Alice in Wonderland,” a common refrain in Miyazaki’s work, “The Boy and the Heron” launches Mahito on a journey of self-awareness and reconciliation. Mahito will encounter bubble-shaped “warawaras” that are perhaps the forerunners of human souls and an older version of himself from an alternate timeline. The tower, he learns, was built around a meteorite that we see fall out of the sky. Inside the tower, Mahito is shown a door through which he can return to his time. He is menaced by giant parakeets and their violent parakeet king. He will eventually meet an old, wise man and a young “fire maiden,” who may be his mother in another, altered form.
Like many great artists, Miyazaki takes the raw material of existence and transforms it into something mysterious, transcendent and universal. Fans of “Stranger Things” will find much to like in Miyazaki’s latest (not to mention, in his previous work as well). Much of “The Boy and the Heron” reminds us of story lines from Miyazaki’s previous films. The pastoral imagery – flowers, trees and forest and sea animals – is also familiar, but none the less beautiful and beguiling. We meet another kind of Wizard of Oz in the heart of the tower. Is he Mahito’s “granduncle”? Or is it Miyazaki himself?
Some of the film’s imagery evokes Swiss symbolist Arnold Bocklin’s painting “Isle of the Dead.” Mahito experiences a burning of his own and is encouraged to return to his own time and “create a better world,” a difficult request to ponder in this time of wars on so many fronts. “The Boy and the Heron” is a reminder that loss is also a doorway to another world.
(“The Boy and the Heron” contains violence, bloody images and mature themes)
Rated PG-13. In Japanese with subtitles and dubbed. At the AMC Boston Common. Grade: A-