Hayao Miyazaki Invites Moviegoers to Dream with Him One Last Time

In this Nov. 8, 2014, file photo, Hayao Miyazaki arrives at the 6th annual Governors Awards in Los Angeles. (AP)
In this Nov. 8, 2014, file photo, Hayao Miyazaki arrives at the 6th annual Governors Awards in Los Angeles. (AP)
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Hayao Miyazaki Invites Moviegoers to Dream with Him One Last Time

In this Nov. 8, 2014, file photo, Hayao Miyazaki arrives at the 6th annual Governors Awards in Los Angeles. (AP)
In this Nov. 8, 2014, file photo, Hayao Miyazaki arrives at the 6th annual Governors Awards in Los Angeles. (AP)

The loudest applause on opening night at the Toronto International Film Festival was for Totoro.

When the Studio Ghibli logo of the magical creature from Hayao Miyazaki's "My Neighbor Totoro" appeared on the screen Thursday night, it meant to the audience the premiere of Miyazaki’s latest and perhaps last film, "The Boy and the Heron." For many at TIFF, it was the movie event of the year.

A decade ago, Miyazaki, the anime master of "Spirited Away," "Howl's Moving Castle," "Kiki’s Delivery Service" and "Ponyo," said he was retiring from film and that 2013's "The Wind That Rises" would be his last film. But Miyazaki, now 82, soon after began slowly toiling away on one more. For Miyazaki, who painstakingly crafts thousands of hand drawings for a film, it's a long and laborious process.

His work has been shrouded in mystery, in part because Miyazaki very rarely does interviews. Plus, in a marketing rarity, "The Boy and the Heron" has been released in Japan without any of the usual promotion — no TV ads or billboards — that accompanies such a feverishly awaited movie. (It will open in North American theaters Dec. 8.) Several of Miyazaki's films rank among the biggest box-office hits ever in Japan; there are few other filmmakers today as revered — and fiercely beloved — as Miyazaki.

"We are privileged enough to be living in a time where Mozart is composing symphonies," the filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said Thursday, introducing the film's first screening outside Japan. "Miyazaki san is a master of that stature."

Miyazaki, who didn't travel to Toronto, has himself lampooned his inability to fully step away. In journal excerpts shared in the film's press notes, Miyazaki writes: "There’s nothing more pathetic than telling the world you’ll retire because of your age, then making another comeback."

"Doesn’t an elderly person deluding themself that they’re still capable, despite their geriatric forgetfulness, prove that they’re past their best?" he adds. "You bet it does."

The title of Miyazaki's latest is "Kimi-tachi wa Do Ikeru Ka?" in Japanese, which translates as "How Do you Live?" It comes from Genzaburo Yoshino's 1937 novel, on which the movie is loosely based. In one of his few public comments, Miyazaki was asked if his film would supply any answers to that question.

"I am making this movie because I do not have the answer," Miyazaki told The New York Times in 2021.

What may surprise some is that while there's much wisdom and reflection in "The Boy and Heron," it's just as infinitely imaginative as Miyazaki's earlier films — a dazzling odyssey in the vivid mold "Spirited Away." It's both the wistful swan song of a great filmmaker and the boundless work of an ever-young creative mind.

The main character is Mahito Maki (voiced by Soma Santoki), a 12-year-old boy who, in the film's opening WWII-set scenes, loses his mother in a Tokyo hospital fire. It's not long after that his father marries Mahito's mother's sister (Yoshino Kimura) and, on the country estate they have moved to, Mahito's bitter and grief-filled life is interrupted by a gray heron (Masaki Suda) that won't leave him alone.

Not unlike Satsuki and Mei of "My Neighbor Totoro," Mahito is led down a wooded path and into an enchanted realm entered through a stone tower built by Mahito's granduncle. We are again, invited into a dizzyingly colorful otherworldly fantasy of Miyazaki's making. It may be rife with metaphor — for nature, for grief, for healing — but it also exists in the pure and unfiltered dimension of dream.

"The Boy and the Heron" can be a convoluted place, but many will recognize countless hallmarks of Miyazaki, albeit with a particular avian atmosphere this time. Yes, there are birds — not just the heron but florid flocks of parakeets. There are fiery hearths and glowing orbs, gobs of bloody organs and malicious actors who threaten the stability of this verdant but under-siege paradise.

There is also an elderly granduncle with a long beard nearing the end of his life, aware that his ability to hold this crumbling world together is receding. Does he need an heir? Will it all collapse? For Miyazaki, who once said the purpose of his films was "to fill in the gap that might be in your heart or your everyday life," "The Boy and the Heron" is ultimately about letting the kingdom go.

"Build your own tower," the granduncle tells Mahito.

If this is to be the last Miyazaki movie (it would be unwise to ever really count him out), it's a tremendously moving goodbye. There is no legacy burnishing here but a gentle plea. Dream your own dreams. Create your own worlds. Build your own towers.



Movie Review: Coon, Olsen and Lyonne Await a Father’s Death in ‘His Three Daughters’ 

This image released by Netflix shows, from left, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne in a scene from "His Three Daughters." (Netflix via AP)
This image released by Netflix shows, from left, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne in a scene from "His Three Daughters." (Netflix via AP)
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Movie Review: Coon, Olsen and Lyonne Await a Father’s Death in ‘His Three Daughters’ 

This image released by Netflix shows, from left, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne in a scene from "His Three Daughters." (Netflix via AP)
This image released by Netflix shows, from left, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne in a scene from "His Three Daughters." (Netflix via AP)

Death isn’t like it is in the movies, a character explains in “His Three Daughters.” Elizabeth Olsen’s Christina is telling her sisters, Katie (Carrie Coon) and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), a story about their father, who became particularly agitated one evening while watching a movie on television in the aftermath of his wife’s passing.

It’s not exactly a fun memory, or present, for any of them. This is, after all, also a movie about death.

The three women have gathered in their father’s small New York apartment for his final days. He’s barely conscious, confined to a room that they take shifts monitoring as they wait out this agonizingly unspecific clock. But even absent the stresses of hospice, tensions would be high for Christina, Katie and Rachel, estranged and almost strangers who are about to lose the one thread still binding them. Taken together, it’s a pressure cooker and a wonderful showcase for three talented actors.

Writer-director Azazel Jacobs has scripted and filmed “His Three Daughters,” streaming Friday on Netflix, like a play. The dialogue often sounds more scripted than conversational (except for Lyonne, who makes everything sound her own); the locations are confined essentially to a handful of rooms in the apartment, with the communal courtyard providing the tiniest bit of breathing room.

Jacobs drops the audience into the middle of things, dolling out background and information slowly and purposefully. Coon’s Katie gets the first word, a monologue really, about the state of things as she sees it and how this is going to work. She’s the eldest, a type-A ball of anxiety, the mother of a difficult teenage daughter and the type of person who can barely conceal either disappointment or deep resentment.

Katie also lives in Brooklyn, not far from her father, but rarely ever visited. Caretaking duties were left to Lyonne’s Rachel, an unemployed stoner who never left home, likes to bet on football games and is poised to inherit the apartment – to the not-so-subtle resentment of her sisters. The youngest is Christina, a head-in-the-clouds, conflict averse yogi and Grateful Dead follower who lives across the country and has had to leave her 3-year-old for the first time.

Jacobs is unafraid of allowing both drama and humor to coexist, to seep into moments unexpectedly. There is an undeniable absurdity to the act of writing an obituary for a loved one in a fraught time like hospice that actually captures a life and a person and doesn’t sound like a laundry list of biographical facts and positive attributes. Add to that the fact that Katie is also frantically trying to get a medical professional to the apartment to witness a DNR order. The women are torn in premature grief, wanting him to stay alive but also go quickly.

They’re all richly drawn and perfectly mysterious too, even to themselves; Jacobs is too smart and attuned to how humans are to give anyone a simple, straightforward explanation. Everyone is making assumptions about others — many of them are wrong, or, at the very least misguided. Coon, with her booming, theatrical voice, is particularly suited playing this slightly terrifying, massively judgmental perfectionist. Lyonne, so good at cool deflection, gets to use that otherworldliness to hit a different kind of note: quiet heartbreak. And Olsen, playing a character, really shines in her non-verbal choices: A reaction, a moment alone that she doesn’t know is being observed. It won’t be surprising if any or all get some recognition this awards season (unfortunately in a system that is uniquely ill-equipped to fete small ensembles with three leads).

There are some movies that die quiet deaths on streaming-first (this did receive a bit of a theatrical run), but “His Three Daughters” is one that seems right on Netflix just for its ability to reach a larger audience than it would stand a chance to at the multiplex. It’s never not riveting watching it all unfold, even with the temptation of the phone nearby. Whether you make it a solo viewing experience or a group one might have everything to do with your own relationship with family members.

And to that initial indictment about movies not getting death right? It’s still probably true. But movies like “His Three Daughters” might help us all make a little bit more sense of the inevitable.