The new Studio Ghibli film The Boy and the Heron has hit theaters, and it may be the final film of master filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, depending on how seriously you take the octogenarian’s retirement announcements (there’s been a few in recent years)—so what kind of ending would it make?
Whether or not Miyazaki is taking his final bow with this film, themes of time, death, and change permeate the work. Like so many of Miyazaki’s films, The Boy and the Heron features a youth who must go out on a solitary quest for meaning. Twelve-year-old Mahito has lost his mother. After she becomes a civilian casualty of war, he moves to the countryside with his father. There, Mahito lives with his aunt, his mother’s younger sister, who is stepping in to marry his father and become a second mother to him.
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