Into the Archive: The Boy and the Heron

 

The Boy and the Heron - Blu-ray + DVD

• MPAA rating‏: ‎ PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
• Director‏: ‎ Hayao Miyazaki
• Media Format‏: ‎ Blu-ray, Subtitled
• Run time‏: ‎ 2 hours and 4 minutes
• Release date‏: ‎ July 9, 2024

 

From the legendary Studio Ghibli and Academy Award®-winning director Hayao Miyazaki comes a critically acclaimed fantasy adventure. After losing his mother during the war, young Mahito moves to his family's estate in the countryside. There, a series of mysterious events lead him to a secluded and ancient tower, home to a mischievous gray heron. When Mahito's new stepmother disappears, he follows the gray heron into the tower, and enters a fantastic world shared by the living and the dead. As he embarks on an epic journey with the heron as his guide, Mahito must uncover the secrets of this world, and the truth about himself. Featuring the voices of Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill, Robert Pattinson and Florence Pugh. - Amazon

           I first became aware on the 12^th (yesterday) that The Boy and the Heron had become available for purchase; it was released on the 9^th. I don’t know what made me check for it on Amazon; maybe I just thought enough time had passed. As it was, my nephew and I were going to my brother’s house for Movie Night, and Walmart was just on the way. I snatched up what was apparently the last copy in the shop (at least the only one on display; and it had been lying flat, so it wasn’t immediately evident); a bit of luck there. As we already had an agenda for the night, we didn’t immediately put it on, but reserved it for another time.

          But I will no doubt watch it myself sometime today (Saturday). I have been wanting to view it, though I never made any great effort to see it in theaters. What with my health, a theater showing is not my most comfortable and convenient mode of watching these days. But then, although I have most of the Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films, I have never seen any of them theatrically (with the possible exception of Howl's Moving Castle).

I have heard that The Boy and the Heron, though critically acclaimed, was not a homerun strike with broad Western audiences, mainly because of its complex themes of visionary, mystical, and psychological conflict that circle around a theme (family loyalty, especially loyalty to the past, and what to hold on to and what to let go) and was only by courtesy a ‘fantasy adventure’, a bit of branding that was applied to try to make Miyazaki’s profoundly personal meditation explicable to the market audience.

None of which frightens me. In fact, it only makes me more eager to see what it has to say. At my age and stage of life I can use all the counsel that an experienced and insightful guide can offer, and Hayao seems like such an artist. I only hope that I’m not expecting too much. Once I've seen it, will I give it a proper review? Who can say?

On a more mundane level, this package includes both Blu-ray and DVD discs, which not only fits in well for my present set up but also is good if I ever get another Blu-ray player. And now I have to see if I can fit it in the movie shelves; I'm old-fashioned enough to want a physical copy and not just something floating out in the aether, but it does make storage an engaging effort. And I wish I had a good place to put up the poster.