The Boy and the Heron

I can count on my fingers the number of directors I still have expectations from in this industry. Anime movies have been lacking on creativity, especially ever since Kimi no Na Wa came out, and it looks like everyone has tried to do their own fantasy movie with subpar writing and bland characters. I'm thinking about directors like Yasuhiro Yoshiura or Keiichi Hara, hell even Mamoru Hosoda suffered from it, they all hugely disappointed me with their latest movies. I really feel like there's an after "Your Name" that's even affecting the one and only Makoto Shinkai, who used to be so creative back in his earlier works, knowing exactly what he could do well like writing subtle romances without the need to add in an extra fantasy setting and gimmicky tropes like time travels.

It doesn't look really good for the future of anime movies, and yet, I still cling to the very few remaining directors that are still pushing the medium in the right direction to me. Hayao Miyazaki is of course one of them. It has been 10 years since we were graced with Kaze Tachinu, an attempt from the director's part to tackle more mature themes than usual by doing a fictionalized biopic on Jiro Horikoshi (voiced by the one and only Hideaki Anno!), that mainly serves as a reflection on the real-world implications of pursuing one's dream, the ethical choices faced by creators, and the bittersweet nature of ambition in the face of adversity. While this one kept Ghibli's trademark spirit, we could already feel a more down to earth, less enthusiastic Miyazaki direction, and this movie clearly marked his evolution to a somewhat wiser man. So it's no surprise that 10 years later, with the release of "How Do You Live?", marketed as his final movie, we get to delve deeper into these themes and even more into Miyazaki, himself, as a person.

I find myself sitting in the same seat, at the same movie theater I went a decade ago, and i'm about to witness what could be one of the last anime movie as we know them. One of the last pieces in a -maybe- soon to be extinct medium.

As per usual, the creative work of Hayao Miyazaki is trenscending. In a sea of bland digital anime, the hand-drawn animations and hand-painted backgrounds, judiciously integrated in modern digital processing along with the use of 3D as well, already sets the bar pretty high visually. It's a Ghibli movie alright, with everything that comes with it. In that regard, it's not especially surprising, but it's not a bad thing anyway. During the whole two hours of the movie, we get to contemplate a range of sceneries, from idyllic pastoral landscapes to huge dreamlike plains, it feels just like home. The pure, unparalleled soul of a Miyazaki masterpiece resonates from it. I was so relieved to see that he still knew how to perfectly transition from an initial, pragmatic setting to a fantastical one. This one does it really well, letting us time to connect with the characters at a human level and relate to them in certain ways, before seamlessly merging it to the fantasy world where we hunt giant fishes, and where a pelican-like specie can't go on living without eating little creatures called the Warawaras, that may remind you of the Kodamas from Mononoke Hime. But outside of its beautiful visual front is one of the most meaningful movie of the studio and probably the most personal for Miyazaki.

"Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiru ka" peels back the layers of our complex human nature, and feels almost autobiographical from Miyazaki's point of view. Knowing that it is, probably, his last movie, it makes sense for him to bring his viewer with an actual sense of closure, kind of like a goodbye letter filled with hope from him to today's youth and next generations. Letting go of the past, of dreams and memories, asking us a simple question: How do you live ?

How in a world plagued by the horrors of war, dominated by anti-environmentalism, with technological progress driving humans more and more apart, do you live ? Do you keep the gears turning, and repeat the errors of the past, or do you try to build your own tower, and surpass all of that on to a better path ?