About The Boy and the Heron/Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka
After losing his mother in a fire in Tokyo, 11-year-old Mahito moves to the countryside with his father Shoichi to take up residence at the Gray Heron Mansion, a fusion of Japanese and Western architecture on a sprawling estate. Mahito struggles with his complex feelings toward his bold and forceful father, as well as his new stepmother Natsuko, who also happens to be his late mother’s younger sister. Isolation and alienation drive Mahito to self-harm and shut himself off inside his new home. Everything changes when he is visited by a gray heron, who eventually reveals himself to be the avian guise of a shapeshifting “heron man.” Led by the gray heron, Mahito ventures further into the dark corners of the estate, where time and space begin to warp, dreams and reality blend into one another, and a world far beyond exerts an inescapable pull.
The Boy and the Heron is a fantasy film with an element of semi-autobiography. Its Japanese title, Kimitachi wa Do Ikiruka—literally meaning “How do you live?”—is borrowed from an eponymous novel by Genzaburo Yoshino that filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki was given in his youth by his mother. What’s more, certain events from Miyazaki’s childhood are depicted in this new animated feature for the first time ever. Its story takes place in a past Japan that still exists vividly within Miyazaki’s memories. [124 min; animation, adventure, drama; Japanese with English subtitles]
“There is a moment in which beauty moves you in a way that is impossible to describe… Miyazaki has that power.” — Guillermo del Toro
“To see Hayao Miyazaki’s feature on a big screen is to experience a world of wonder unlike any other” — Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"The Boy and the Heron may or may not be Miyazaki’s final movie, but either way, it’s a staggering addition to one of animation’s most totemic filmographies." — David Sims, The Atlantic
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