The Boy and the Heron

Hayao Miyazaki took the Japanese title from a 1937 novel by Genzaburo Yoshino, but producer Toshio Suzuki says the book has no link to the film beyond the title. On screen it is an object, not a key; reading it first hands you no map. The work took roughly 7 years, all hand drawn, with about 60 animators. Miyazaki concentrated on storyboards while Takeshi Honda was animation director. Suzuki opened it in Japan on a single poster, with no trailer or advertising, and it still took 1.8 billion yen, Ghibli’s biggest start. Worldwide it passed 294 million dollars. The telling withholds explanation on purpose, releasing information only as fast as Mahito earns it. Before the tower opens, the film stays a long while in wartime Japan as a realistic grief drama. It won the animated feature prize at the Oscars, the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs, and animation of the year from the Japan Academy. At all four, that was its only category. A good fit if you can take a film that never sets out the tower’s rules and tells you no more than Mahito knows. Not for viewers who treat the long realistic opening as a delay before the fantasy, or who come from Yoshino’s novel expecting an adaptation.