My Review of THE BOY AND THE HERON (2023)

I'm not going to sit here and act like Ghibli movies are renowned for making sense, because I've seen Spirited Away roughly 15 times and I still have questions. The Boy and the Heron really took advantage of my willingness to just be along for the ride, though, and the dreamlike logic that seems to govern this world was constantly being stretched very thin. Maybe there is beauty in strong-arming us, the feeble audience, into giving up control, so we just stop trying to connect certain events to one another; maybe this plot emulates fading childhood memories, where the brain filled gaps with some weird connective moments that never really happened; maybe people other than me are comfortable knowing that there is meaning hiding somewhere in The Boy and the Heron, even if they can't personally find it.

I would like this movie more if I felt like I was walking away with something, besides a feeling started as frustration and morphed into reluctant acceptance. The score was beautiful and haunting, even though it was all over the place... this is consistent with the story, which has sweet beginnings but crescendos into a tornado of multiversal crazy talk and insane bird people. Obviously, things like character design and colors were perfect, and there is something to be said about the themes of age and life and whatever. There was a through-line missing for me that would have properly tied all corners of the story together in a really helpful way.