The Boy and the Heron, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, fashions a fantastical Alice in Wonderland tale that occurs during the Pacific War in Tokyo. A young boy named Mahito Maki (voiced by Luca Padovan) loses his mother to a hospital fire late one evening. Although he never sees what actually happened to his mother, the fire burns into Mahito’s memory when he rushes out to see the fire. A year later, Mahito’s dad, Shoichi (voiced by Christian Bale), who owns an air munitions factory, moves Mahito and himself out of Tokyo to the countryside home of his late wife along with his new pregnant wife, Natsuko (voiced by Gemma Chan), who is the sister of his late wife.
As soon as Mahito steps into the countryside home, a grey heron swoops right past his face. Intrigued, Mahito stalks the heron and follows it to a mysterious tower on the estate. Supposedly, the tower was the last place that Mahito’s great granduncle was seen before disappearing suddenly without a a trace. Mahito luckily escapes the tower intact and gets a warning by the caricature grannies who care for him and Natsuko at the home.
Mahito is cold and indifferent toward his new stepmother, Natsuko. After all, he just lost his mom one year ago. All he wants to do is be by himself, grieving, and explore his new countryside home. When he tries to go to his new school, he gets into a fight with several boys. Beaten up but not severely, Mahito deliberately injures himself with a rock to make the fight look more damaging than it actually was which prompts Mahito’s dad to pull Mahito out of school instead.
The heron (voiced by Robert Pattinson who sounds pretty unrecognizable) then speaks to Mahito, promising to lead him to his mother who he says is still alive. A swarm of creatures then engulf Mahito which the grannies see and call to Natsuko for help. Natsuko quickly grabs a bow and shoots a whistling arrow into the hoard of creatures, saving Mahito who has fainted from the fray. Mahito wakes several days later and is not quite sure if what happened to him was actually real or not. He does find a feather from the heron in his bedroom and decides to craft his own bow and arrow with the feather of the heron to stabilize the arrow. Mahito also finds a book left by his mother, Hisako, in the room with her handwriting on the inside flap. While reading the book, he spies outside his window, Natsuko, who has been ill with morning sickness, going into the forest.
Mahito and one of the grannies, Kiriko (voiced by Florence Pugh), follow Natsuko to the tower where Mahito instead finds his mother lying on a armoire with the heron. Upon touching her though, Mahito sadly finds that his mother was just a water illusion created by the heron. Angry at the heron for tricking him, Mahito shoots his arrow which follows the heron no matter where he flew and pierces a hole in his beak, making him lose the ability to fly. The heron is actually a weird man living inside the body of a heron. The master of the tower (voiced by Mark Hamill) appears at the top of the room and tells the heron man to be Mahito’s guide to find Natsuko. Mahito, Kiriko, and the heron man all sink into the floor, or in the vernacular of Alice in Wonderland, down the rabbit hole.
We follow Mahito as he floats down onto an island surrounded by an ocean where he’s attacked by a flock of pelicans to go through an iron gate portal. He’s saved by a younger version of Kirko who is a fisherwoman who can command fire with a riding crop. She catches huge fish from the ocean because the other boats are filled with dead visages of people who can’t kill anything. The fish she catches are to feed the Warawara, Ghibli’s obligatory cute creature for this movie, round bubble-like beings with hands and feet who are the spirits that will be reborn into our world when they mature and float upward into the sky.
As you can see, things just get weirder and weirder from here on out if you couldn’t tell already from the events that happened even before Mahito is dropped into this world of living and dead with smatterings of people from Mahito’s world that are both the same and different. Thrust into this strange world full of predators, Mahito and the heron man, who he quickly reunites with, become allies and friends. Mahito even repairs the hole in the heron man’s beak, so he can fly again. Together, they go in search of Natsuko who has also somehow ended up in this strange world.
Like Alice in Wonderland, you probably will not understand everything about this world. Several things are left unexplained, and you’ll be left wondering why. You will be able to understand the general gist of the story though as Mahito and the heron man navigate through several misadventures to find Natsuko and for Mahito to realize something about himself and those around him. Be sure to listen for Willem Dafoe and Dave Bautista who also contributed voices for the movie.
The fantastical world Miyazaki creates is as complex and beautiful as the world Lewis Carroll created with Alice in Wonderland. In this case though, it’s not a story about growing up into adulthood. It’s a story about dealing with the grief of death, relationships with those around you, and family. For instance, the heron man was the antagonist who turned into Mahito’s friend. In the end, Mahito finds a little peace with the death of his mother and reconciles with Natsuko as his new mother.
