better than arietty and the wind rises
not as good as spirited away, howl or mononoke
pointless to compare it to earlier movies like laputa and nausicaa because those all had a linear plot
i absolutely loved it but ive enjoyed all of his movies. however, i think it needs a bit of homework to understand the theme. knowing a bit about miyazaki and japanese history really helped me appreciate some of the key points. it felt like a metaphorical autobiographical piece at places but i think you can still enjoy it even if you don't know anything about him.
Depends, I personally didn't like it because it's a movie buried in subtext and metaphors. The characters kinda just move from one interesting room to another, with a vague goal and no clear motives will emotional imagery is presented to you.
It jumps around way to much, pacing is fast, way too many characters and plot thread with little time for you to care or grow attached to any of them.
Best way I can describe it is eating tapas, little bite size emotions.
Basically if you're a "Throw the ring into mordor" guy you're not gonna like it much. If you're a "The curtains are blue because the character lost his mom on a rainy day" you're gonna like it.
I didn't like it. Felt like the ramblings of an old man, grafted by a 2 scenes dedicated to old people having to give exposition. Had to make room to fit in a 30 minutes of cute Ghibli creature #37, I guess.
Miyazaki’s been trying to retire since Spirited Away 20 years ago. Some people are lifelong workaholics who aren’t happy unless they’re elbow deep in their job. They aren’t built for retirement.
>Miyazaki’s been trying to retire since Spirited Away 20 years ago. Some people are lifelong workaholics who aren’t happy unless they’re elbow deep in their job. They aren’t built for retirement.
I hope he just fully chuds out at some point and makes an over the top action movie that follows an alternative history WWII Japan and a top ace zero pilot that takes the skies and absolutely fricks every yankee up and the final scene is Japan developing the nuke first and he hand delivers with an experimental kamikaze rocket and the credits roll over a mushroom cloud and a crater where the US used to be. You could tell he wants to with how much detail and effort went into animating the Tokyo firebombing and the aircraft wienerpit glass.
The guy is 82, this was a stretch, another movie is pushing it.
Let's be honest though the guy is gonna die with a pencil in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth.
he was slightly resentful of his aunt becoming his new mom because he still missed his mom.
then he was transported to the magical world where he saw that the aunt was in a way cursed and doomed.
his own desire to return to the real world and understanding that his aunt isnt a bad person made him desperate to save her, and to do that he reminds her that she has a life to live as a mother, despite his bitterness at losing his own mother. theres no point in being angry at her.
you could say his character didnt really change, he was always like that, he was just immature enough to ignore it. you can back that up with the evidence that he was never really tempted to stay in the fantasy world, he told the grand uncle that he was going back immediately.
well they made it a point to show him struggling to describe his relationship status with her, softening each time. imo that reticence dually informs the audience of the shift and is in part itself responsible by having to expose his begruding biased selfish immaturity to others, that confrontation is part of the dialectical process for change.
i figured there was something in the book that his actual mother left behind that happened to change his mind, but it's hard to say since this movie seems to expect the audience to read minds
>book
it's a real book that goes by the same name as the title of the movie('how do you live?'). it's a series of vignettes about how a kid learned to be a good person, similar to 'The Little Prince'.
probably because he read the book and grew up but it didn't explain about the book in the movie at all, and the title of the book is also the original title of the movie
I liked it but it's one of the strangest movies I've seen
Isn't Mahito and Natsuko's relationship + Mahito's grief and guilt over the death of his mother supposed to be the center of this film? Isn't the heron supposed to be the outward manifestation of that grief and guilt? So why the frick do we go on a magical adventure WITHOUT Natsuko half an hour into the film and reduce the heron to Mahito's comedic relief buddy-cop character?
If the story is really about Mahito's mother and Natsuko and Mahito's relationship, Mahito should have accompanied Natsuko into the tower pursuing Hisako and/or antagonized by the heron.
Jumpy and inconsistent. Natsuko and Mahito's reconciliation at the end of the film was totally out of left field. Why did she say she hated him, again?
We start to see Natsuko as a caretaker to Mahito and her grief over Mahito's mother in the beginning of the film, especially when she drives away the heron and apologizes to Hisako for allowing him to be hurt, but it gets completely abandoned as soon as he steps foot in the tower.
This was my gripe. It felt like he never got to know Natsuko better. I think movie would work better for me if you swapped the younger version of the old lady for an alternate version of Natsuko
>It felt like he never got to know Natsuko better.
idk I feel like it'd undermine the point of his maturation if she had to win his conditional respect and affection through cliche movie tender feminine mom coddling
yeah I didn't know anything about this going in but after The Wind Rises I had settled in to the poetic pastoral romanticism and was totally game for a well told intimate low concept story - something like In This Corner of the World. Managed the transition well but really lost a lot of tonal resonance for me with all the obligatory spinning Ghibli plates they got going. The Miyazaki's auto-fiction towards the end was cool but felt stapled onto the Mihato's story imo, succession not all that relevant to his "arc"
>Why did she say she hated him, again?
haha pregnant women are so crazy and hormonal amirite?
no really, i have no idea.
most i can glean is that Natsuko is "dead" (or having the desire to die) since the "delivery room" echoes the tomb past the golden gate of the fantasy world. Mahito was a link to the land of the living and disrupted her death, so she lashed out, but quickly realized she didn't actually want to die. Idk what would've happened to the baby, though.
This is all guesses, though.
stress makes people more honest, even though they don't fully mean it. a similar thing happened in suzume; mothers are always filtering themselves around their children and it ends up festering.
yea but he was able over come it and nip it in the bud. simba, on the other hand, ran away from it all and caused his tribe to suffer; both movies tell similar lessons but in different ways.
Hayao's father was married to a women and she died, and then he got married to Hayao's mom less than a year after she died
Hayao's mom was his real mother but she couldn't walk around due to disease until he became like 16
His mommy issue is complicated
Watching this on 27th with sister. Is it actually good or overhyped because ghibli?
It's good but it's also probably his worst film
better than arietty and the wind rises
not as good as spirited away, howl or mononoke
pointless to compare it to earlier movies like laputa and nausicaa because those all had a linear plot
>not as good as spirited away, howl or mononoke
lol, why did the geezer even bother. shamfur dispray.
it crosses off a lot on miyazakis checklist of fantasy adventure: a meaningful emotional story, magic, and animation.
its not his best, but all the other ghibli movies that would qualify as peers are different enough for me to hesitate giving a ranking.
In the end, I really enjoyed it. it does seem like a culmination of a lot of what hes learned over the years.
glad I saw it on the big screen, the animation is really really good.
i absolutely loved it but ive enjoyed all of his movies. however, i think it needs a bit of homework to understand the theme. knowing a bit about miyazaki and japanese history really helped me appreciate some of the key points. it felt like a metaphorical autobiographical piece at places but i think you can still enjoy it even if you don't know anything about him.
Depends, I personally didn't like it because it's a movie buried in subtext and metaphors. The characters kinda just move from one interesting room to another, with a vague goal and no clear motives will emotional imagery is presented to you.
It jumps around way to much, pacing is fast, way too many characters and plot thread with little time for you to care or grow attached to any of them.
Best way I can describe it is eating tapas, little bite size emotions.
Basically if you're a "Throw the ring into mordor" guy you're not gonna like it much. If you're a "The curtains are blue because the character lost his mom on a rainy day" you're gonna like it.
The best anime movie I've seen since Miyazaki's last movie.
Why is the boy on heron?
good to see Florence Pugh finally getting some work!
It was good. The story felt really, really disjointed, though.
it did until the last 10-15 minutes. He wraps it up very well.
It looks identical to Spirited Away. Is it in the same universe? If not, that’s lazy as frick
moron
Nah, you can’t look at Spirited Away and this movie and not think they’re almost identical looking. It’s more similar than just being Miyazaki’s style
i did cry a little bit at the end when he said goodbye to his mom
I didn't like it. Felt like the ramblings of an old man, grafted by a 2 scenes dedicated to old people having to give exposition. Had to make room to fit in a 30 minutes of cute Ghibli creature #37, I guess.
The Wind Rises better tho
Isn’t this like the third time he’s come out of retirement to make one more movie?
Miyazaki’s been trying to retire since Spirited Away 20 years ago. Some people are lifelong workaholics who aren’t happy unless they’re elbow deep in their job. They aren’t built for retirement.
>Miyazaki’s been trying to retire since Spirited Away 20 years ago. Some people are lifelong workaholics who aren’t happy unless they’re elbow deep in their job. They aren’t built for retirement.
I hope he just fully chuds out at some point and makes an over the top action movie that follows an alternative history WWII Japan and a top ace zero pilot that takes the skies and absolutely fricks every yankee up and the final scene is Japan developing the nuke first and he hand delivers with an experimental kamikaze rocket and the credits roll over a mushroom cloud and a crater where the US used to be. You could tell he wants to with how much detail and effort went into animating the Tokyo firebombing and the aircraft wienerpit glass.
he's a pacifist. that would never happen. he's also autistic hence the immense amount of dtail on the aircraft wienerpit glass
The guy is 82, this was a stretch, another movie is pushing it.
Let's be honest though the guy is gonna die with a pencil in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth.
sixth
I didn't get it. Why did the kid start liking the new mom? Felt like he just did without any real reason for the change
He didn't want his father to be sad, so he accepted his new mother.
He became a man.
he was slightly resentful of his aunt becoming his new mom because he still missed his mom.
then he was transported to the magical world where he saw that the aunt was in a way cursed and doomed.
his own desire to return to the real world and understanding that his aunt isnt a bad person made him desperate to save her, and to do that he reminds her that she has a life to live as a mother, despite his bitterness at losing his own mother. theres no point in being angry at her.
you could say his character didnt really change, he was always like that, he was just immature enough to ignore it. you can back that up with the evidence that he was never really tempted to stay in the fantasy world, he told the grand uncle that he was going back immediately.
well they made it a point to show him struggling to describe his relationship status with her, softening each time. imo that reticence dually informs the audience of the shift and is in part itself responsible by having to expose his begruding biased selfish immaturity to others, that confrontation is part of the dialectical process for change.
i figured there was something in the book that his actual mother left behind that happened to change his mind, but it's hard to say since this movie seems to expect the audience to read minds
>book
it's a real book that goes by the same name as the title of the movie('how do you live?'). it's a series of vignettes about how a kid learned to be a good person, similar to 'The Little Prince'.
I had no idea it was a real book. That's interesting. I wonder if reading it would improve my understanding of Heron.
probably because he read the book and grew up but it didn't explain about the book in the movie at all, and the title of the book is also the original title of the movie
I liked it but it's one of the strangest movies I've seen
Isn't Mahito and Natsuko's relationship + Mahito's grief and guilt over the death of his mother supposed to be the center of this film? Isn't the heron supposed to be the outward manifestation of that grief and guilt? So why the frick do we go on a magical adventure WITHOUT Natsuko half an hour into the film and reduce the heron to Mahito's comedic relief buddy-cop character?
If the story is really about Mahito's mother and Natsuko and Mahito's relationship, Mahito should have accompanied Natsuko into the tower pursuing Hisako and/or antagonized by the heron.
Jumpy and inconsistent. Natsuko and Mahito's reconciliation at the end of the film was totally out of left field. Why did she say she hated him, again?
We start to see Natsuko as a caretaker to Mahito and her grief over Mahito's mother in the beginning of the film, especially when she drives away the heron and apologizes to Hisako for allowing him to be hurt, but it gets completely abandoned as soon as he steps foot in the tower.
This was my gripe. It felt like he never got to know Natsuko better. I think movie would work better for me if you swapped the younger version of the old lady for an alternate version of Natsuko
>alternate version of Natsuko
natsuko and his mom are basically the same person
>It felt like he never got to know Natsuko better.
idk I feel like it'd undermine the point of his maturation if she had to win his conditional respect and affection through cliche movie tender feminine mom coddling
>tender feminine mom coddling
ahh.... sounds nice,..
yeah I didn't know anything about this going in but after The Wind Rises I had settled in to the poetic pastoral romanticism and was totally game for a well told intimate low concept story - something like In This Corner of the World. Managed the transition well but really lost a lot of tonal resonance for me with all the obligatory spinning Ghibli plates they got going. The Miyazaki's auto-fiction towards the end was cool but felt stapled onto the Mihato's story imo, succession not all that relevant to his "arc"
>Why did she say she hated him, again?
haha pregnant women are so crazy and hormonal amirite?
no really, i have no idea.
most i can glean is that Natsuko is "dead" (or having the desire to die) since the "delivery room" echoes the tomb past the golden gate of the fantasy world. Mahito was a link to the land of the living and disrupted her death, so she lashed out, but quickly realized she didn't actually want to die. Idk what would've happened to the baby, though.
This is all guesses, though.
stress makes people more honest, even though they don't fully mean it. a similar thing happened in suzume; mothers are always filtering themselves around their children and it ends up festering.
I'm probably being overly sympathetic here but I feel so bad for Mahito... he's like 12, man. Your mom dying isn't your fault...
yea but he was able over come it and nip it in the bud. simba, on the other hand, ran away from it all and caused his tribe to suffer; both movies tell similar lessons but in different ways.
Hayao's father was married to a women and she died, and then he got married to Hayao's mom less than a year after she died
Hayao's mom was his real mother but she couldn't walk around due to disease until he became like 16
His mommy issue is complicated
Is it just me or is it a little fricked to marry and have a child with a woman's sister a year after she dies
It's fricked but also kinda realistic since his wife's family is so rich and he needed their money
Anyway, that's not what actually happened to Hayao
shared trauma as a bonding agent. It's fricked but makes sense when you think about what people are like
Well Cinemaphile, are you gonna buy?