As the animation god Hayao Miyazaki's final work in his career, "The Heron and the Boy" was released in Japan with absolutely zero publicity and even no trailer. It surpassed "The Hidden Girl" in just 4 days with only one poster. box office record. For such a mysterious Hayao Miyazaki movie, which always likes to hide deep meanings in the plot, we were naturally mentally prepared before going in to watch it. However , at the moment when the movie ended and the theater lit up, we were only All I can do is sit still and immerse myself in the leisurely melody of Yonezu Kenshi's "Globe" and fall into endless contemplation. This movie is not only the exploration of history, life and self like "The Wind Rises", but also rich in "The Hidden Girl" , "Magic Princess" and "Howl's Moving Castle", various symbols of mythology, nature and culture also appear in "Castle in the Sky", "Ponyo on the Cliff", "My Neighbor Totoro", "Kiki's Delivery Service" "The most direct expression of friendship, family affection and love. However, while maintaining the quality of national treasure-level hand-painted paintings and incorporating many dynamic details to a higher level, the story is not as simple and easy to understand as other Miyazaki Hayao works in the past. Instead, it is like a palace full of treasures. A maze without a map is still confusing even if it reaches the end. Therefore, in order to let everyone better understand what the story of "The Heron and the Boy" is and the hidden meaning, this in-depth analysis will be divided into two parts. The first half of the explanation will be divided into two parts. From a personal perspective, it completely reorganizes the plot and organizes the symbolic meaning of the characters. The second half will talk about why Hayao Miyazaki did not hesitate to make a comeback based on the film production process, interviews and inspiration from the novel "What kind of life do you want to live". What you need to pay attention to when making this movie is that the plot of "The Heron and the Boy" has not been finalized yet. Even Hayao Miyazaki himself said in the post-screening discussion that even he himself could not understand the movie. Therefore , the following content is biased towards personal interpretation. The purpose is to make it easier for everyone to understand the plot context rather than to give clear answers, so it may be different from your ideas. You are welcome to share your opinions in the message area and communicate rationally. If you are the first This channel is dedicated to promoting more possibilities behind film and television works. From time to time, there will also be super cute cat easter eggs to accompany you. If you like movies as much as we do, please subscribe, like and turn on the little bell . Support is the best motivation for us to work hard to update! The original title of "The Heron and the Boy" was "What Kind of Life Do You Want to Live?" which originated from the juvenile literature that Hayao Miyazaki was very fond of. The novel of the same name written by the writer Yoshino Gensaburo in 1937 tells the story of the young Junichi Honda through his relationship with his uncle. Sharing life experiences gradually shapes one's own personal and life values. Although the content of the novel has almost nothing to do with the plot of "The Heron and the Boy", the real protagonist in the movie accidentally read this book , which greatly inspired his ideas. Changes , so if you want to fully understand the real person's state of mind, this book is indispensable , but we will save this part for the second half before analyzing it in depth. I also recommend that friends who have not watched the movie or not can read this book. What a great harvest. Going back to "The Heron and the Boy" , in fact, this movie is really based on another magical semi-fairy tale novel "The Book of Lost Things", a children's literature story written by John Connery in 2006. The background happened during World War II when David's mother died of illness. As his father remarried, the war broke out, and he moved away from his hometown, family changes deepened David's uneasiness and jealousy of his stepmother and newborn baby. At this moment, David heard The call of his deceased mother makes him miss her, so he breaks into a different world and embarks on a bizarre adventure. In addition to changing the background to Japan, "The Heron and the Boy" has almost the same encounters between the real person and David . However, this story is actually also related to the palace. Saki Hayao's own life is very similar. Born in 1941, he has experienced the cruelty of war since he was a child. The fire that killed Masato's mother in the movie alluded to the Tokyo Air Raid that he personally experienced. Masato's father ran a business that manufactured fighter jet masks. The factory was also where Hayao Miyazaki's father worked during the war, but Hayao Miyazaki's mother was not as gentle as in the movie. On the contrary, she was very strict in educating her four brothers and would severely reprimand her if they made the slightest mistake. This also made Miyazaki Hayao meticulous in the future. Hayao Miyazaki 's character read "How Do You Want to Live" for the first time, just like a real person in the movie. He got the book from his mother and was deeply inspired by it. However, unfortunately, his mother suffered from spinal tuberculosis when he was 6 years old. This incurable disease left her bedridden for a long time. Hayao Miyazaki even had no time to see her mother for the last time in order to produce the studio's first film "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind". However, "The Book of Lost Things" is similar to "The Heron and the Boy" There's more to it than that. If the story touches Hayao Miyazaki's own experience, then the way he tells the story may be what really makes this movie "The Book of Lost Things" seem to be a realistic fairy tale , but in fact the novel is The narrative method is very special and even a little counterintuitive. At first, we started from David's perspective and thought it was a growth story about a child learning to let go. But when the story came to a different world, many characters all appeared , but no reason was explained. Each story seemed like They are all independent individuals who seem to have deep meanings they want to convey, but in the end their connection with David is dispensable. Some scenes are even inconsistent. It should be a fairy tale-like development , but it is a criticism that is forced into reality. Whose story? Why tell this story? There is almost no answer to be found in the novel. It seems that these elements are just condiments added at will by the author, but the sour, sweet, bitter, spicy and salty are all added into it, making it hard to swallow. Are the above feelings also related to your experience when watching "The Heron and the Boy" Same? I originally thought it would be a story like "The Wind Rises" that focuses on realism and the inner feelings of the characters, but after the real person entered the different world, the plot began to go crazy. Characters such as Pelican, Fisherman, Wow, Wow, Huomei... etc. continued to appear, but it made people more and more confused . What is the character's position in this story? Why are they here? Just when the audience thought they had missed something and were eager to find clues, the plot switched to the next scene without warning, and the previous scene ended without any explanation in the story . The interpretation was too abstract , causing many viewers to know that this was a scene. Are you reading the story of pain but don’t understand how young people grow up? The big reason is that the plot abandons the most basic explanatory dialogue in the movie , such as the first meeting between Chihiro and Yubaba in "The Hidden Girl". Yubaba took her name and asked Chihiro to stay in the soup house. At work, you won't even realize that this paragraph is intended to explain to the audience , because Chihiro is the incarnation of the audience at this time. The explanation Yubaba clicks on is not only explaining the situation to Chihiro, but also indicating how the plot will develop next , so we continue to watch. When Chihiro works seriously in the soup house, she gradually learns responsibility and dedication from a naive child and grows into a complete person who can take care of herself and understand the truth. The characters appearing in each plot have direct or indirect correspondence with this theme. But in "The Heron and the The role of "Boy" is more about direct action. The audience is like Alice following the White Rabbit. They need to interpret and even figure out the causes and consequences of things. So it is not difficult to understand why this movie has such polarized reviews. After all, it has For most viewers, movies should not ask themselves to construct their own stories but should use the plot to provide reasonable answers. So whether it is because the audience is not good enough or because Miyazaki really lets himself go regardless of the audience's experience, I think we should sort out the plot first before continuing in depth. Discussion So if you are a friend who cares about logic very much, I suggest you read the following analysis before going in to watch the movie. The experience will be much better. But if you can accept to experience the movie first and then think about what you watched , I still strongly recommend going first . Watching the movie will give you more feelings. A long time ago , a meteorite pierced the sky and landed in the mountain. The amazing thing is that a stone tower appeared in the huge pothole. People thought it was an ominous thing and did not dare to approach it until a man appeared. He believed that the stone tower had magical powers, so he built a mansion along the tower. One day, at the mansion The man who was studying in the mansion disappeared mysteriously. Then his niece entered the mansion and disappeared. A year later, the girl suddenly appeared again as if nothing happened . The family was afraid of the magic power of the tower and blocked the entrance to prevent others from entering again. The time came to Japan in 1942. It was during World War II that the young boy Makoto lost his mother in an air raid fire. Three years later, his father remarried his mother's sister Natsuko and brought Makoto to the home of his mother's family. Although Natsuko cared for him very much , Makoto still maintained a polite and distant attitude. He only secretly misses his mother when others are not around. Born into a wealthy family, he is also incompatible with the surrounding environment. He not only fights with other teenagers , but even smashes his head with a rock as an excuse not to go to school and asks his father to vent his anger on him. At this moment, a magical The heron appeared in front of him and told Makoto that his mother was actually alive. The pronunciation of heron in Japanese is the same as "fraud", so the image is that of a short and cunning man, which contrasts with the "sincere person" that Makoto symbolizes . Believing in it, the real person made his own bow and arrows and tried to drive away the heron, but the cunning it still kept harassing the real person. One day, the real person accidentally discovered the "What kind of life do you want to live" that his mother left for him. He was reading with gusto, but found that Natsuko walked away alone. Entering the woods of the mysterious mansion, in order to find the real person Natsuko and Kiriko, one of the servants, they went to the mysterious mansion. The heron had been waiting for the real person who had been unwilling to cooperate for a long time. He defeated it with a bow and arrow and asked about the whereabouts of Natsuko. At this time, a voice appeared : "Tower "The Lord" asked the heron to lead the real person to the "lower world" to meet him, but the two were separated during the process of falling. The real person came to an island that resembled Arnold Bocklin's painting "Island of the Dead". Many hungry pelicans occupied it. And launched an attack on the real person. A female fisherman suddenly appeared, drove away the pelican , and took the real person back to his residence. The real person learned from the fisherman that this world was the world of the dead. In fact, when he came to the mansion, there was an inscription on the entrance arcade. That is, the lower realm of the Gate of Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy has a translucent black humanoid figure and a marshmallow-like bala-wala . After the fishermen catch the fish, they distribute the human figures and the bala-wala. When they are full, the bala-wala will expand, float, ascend to the sky, and be reincarnated. Although in the movie It is not stated clearly , but the conversation between the fisherman and the real person once mentioned that these black humanoid figures are the souls of the war. Perhaps they will be purified into bala wala after eating enough fish. And just when wala wala is about to ascend to the sky, a large number of pelicans appear to hunt. Wow, wow, a girl, Huomei, used fire magic to fight off the pelican. Many interpretations here believe that the pelican represents the bird that delivers the child, but it is not because the bird that delivers the child is not a pelican but a white stork. The pelican here symbolizes the six realms. In the hell realm in reincarnation, both the fisherman and Huimei use fire to repel the pelican, which also alludes to the Shinto tradition of exorcism. Then the heron found Masato and was persuaded by the fisherman. Masato and the heron teamed up to find Natsuko. It turned out that the fisherman was the young servant Kiriko. She also followed her into the lower world and transformed into a fisherman. Then Zhenren and Heron came to the country of parrots. At the critical moment when she was almost eaten by the parrots, Huomei appeared again to save Zhenren and explained to him the origin of the tower. It turned out that there were countless people in the tower. The door is connected to different time points. Each time point has its own number. The upper world cannot see the entrance to the lower world, but the lower world can pass through the door and return to the upper world. The real person looks through the door because the three people are missing. The anxious father who came over still insists on finding them. Natsuko could not go back to see the real person until later . Huomi was so insistent that she could only take him to the delivery room. Natsuko, who was sleeping in a space like a shrine boundary, was preparing to give birth to the child here. However, the intrusion of the real person violated the taboo. Natsuko became emotional. Zhenren blamed Zhenren and refused to return to the upper world. At this time, Zhenzhen finally admitted that Natsuko was his mother , but the powerful magic still knocked Zhenren and Huomi unconscious. In the dream, Zhenren finally met the "Tower Master" and it turned out that he was Zhenren's Zeng. Uncle Zeng was also the man who built the mansion. He used magic to transform the lower world and brought pelicans and parrots here. He wanted to create a world without malice. Uncle Zeng took a fancy to the real person's sincerity and hoped that he would succeed him. Understanding Uncle Zeng After the intention, let’s return to the issue mentioned before . The first possibility is that Xia Zi knew that Zhen Zhen was chosen and decided to replace Zhen Zhen with the child in her belly so that Zhen Zhen could return to the upper world. The second possibility is that Uncle Zeng The father is afraid that the real person will refuse to inherit, so he has prepared a record. By the way, the real person who does not believe in Heron can come to the lower world obediently. Let us first clarify the conditions for the successor. The movie only mentions that there must be blood relations and no evil intentions , but there is actually a third hidden factor. The condition is this. From the previous mention that a niece of great uncle once entered the lower world but was not the next heir , and at the end we see that Natsuko gave birth to a boy, we can deduce that at the end of the movie we also know that this niece is not Natsuko, so it stands to reason. She doesn't know about the lower world , so the first point can be eliminated first. Judging from the purpose, Natsuko is also a hostage for her uncle and the real person to negotiate. As for the taboo of the delivery room, it comes from the Japanese tradition that heavy bleeding when a woman gives birth is a symbol of uncleanness. Therefore, she needed to be isolated in the maternity ward to wait for delivery and set up a barrier to pray for the safety of mother and child. The intrusion of the real person may cause difficult labor, which is why she was so angry. This tradition gradually disappeared with the advancement of medical concepts after World War II. At this time, the real person woke up from the dream and it turned out to be The heron got into the group of parrots and rescued him. The two found that Huomei had been captured by the Parrot King. The king wanted to accuse Zhenren of violating a taboo , and Huomei negotiated with the creator Uncle Zeng to obtain more resources. However, Uncle Zeng wanted Zhenren to inherit. There is a detail here that hints at why the citizens of this world are parrots. Two ordinary parrots followed the king to great-uncle's garden and wondered if this was the Paradise. The religion that talks about the Paradise is Buddhism. The Western Paradise of Buddhism is like a peaceful garden in the movie. Parrots are one of the birds that live here. In Buddhism, these birds are the incarnations of Amitabha. Just like in the movie, great uncle brought them into this world. The top space of the world also symbolizes the six reincarnations of Tiandao Zhenren and Heron also came here. Unwilling to fail, the king secretly followed them and wanted to gain the power to control the world. Finally, Uncle Zeng, who saw the real person, showed himself to him. The building blocks that maintain the balance of the world hope that Zhenren can re-stack 13 unpolluted building blocks to create a new world. The conversation between the two here is very interesting. Uncle Zeng first gave Zhenren a stone and said that the stone had evil intentions and he could not touch it. After touching it, Uncle Zeng took another pure stone, but Zhenren said that he had hurt himself and had evil thoughts, so he could not touch the pure stone. Maybe you would think that Zhenren was just playing a word game, so you could reasonably refuse Uncle Zeng . What exactly does this conversation mean? Why Great Uncle Gui didn't ask him to inherit the world after hearing what he said ? This is actually related to the core idea that Hayao Miyazaki wants to convey to the audience. We will leave it to the second half to explain in detail. Let's go back to the plot and hide aside to find out. The Parrot King who revealed the truth about the world was furious and couldn't believe that his world was just a game of stacking blocks. He angrily stepped forward to grab the blocks, but because of his evil thoughts, the world collapsed. Uncle Zeng chose to die with the world before leaving, letting Wuzi take it with him. Zhenren and Huomei returned to the original time. Only then did we finally know Huomei’s true identity. It turns out that she is Zhenren's mother, the niece who had been missing for a year. Zhenren said to Huomei, "If you go back to that time, you will be burned to death in the end." Huomei replied, "I want to go back and give birth to you." Zhenren was sad. Said "I don't want you to leave" Huo Mei smiled "Have you forgotten? I am not afraid of Huo. The real person who returned to the original world accidentally took away a stone and therefore retained a little memory of the lower world . Although Heron told him that these will all change over time. Gradually forgotten , but the real person has the courage to live his own life. The above is the complete plot and metaphor of "The Heron and the Boy". In order to explain smoothly , a lot of content related to Japanese mythology has been deleted, such as the setting of the delivery room. It may come from the legend of Toyotama Hime that the setting of sisters Homi and Natsuko marrying the same person is also a reference to the relationship between Toyotama Hime and Yui Hime. The setting of the Lord of the Cemetery on Stone Island and No Turn Back may also refer to Izana. The Legend of Beauty Legend has it that Izanaki missed his dead wife Izanami and came to the underworld to take her back to the human world, but on the way he violated the rule of no return and Izanami became extremely ugly and vowed to take away a thousand lives every day. From then on, he became the Lord of the Underworld. The reason why Izanagi was able to get out of the underworld was the torch in his hand, so Kiriko used the flame to temporarily suppress the Lord of the Cemetery and faced away from the stone backwards, which also corresponds to Izanagi's response to Judging from the timeline of the entire story of Izanami's Seal, the plan to make Makoto the heir actually started when Homi was a child, but an accident occurred along the way , which is what Homi left to Makoto: "What kind of life do you want to live?" If the real person has not read this book , then he will probably take over the identity of the Lord of the Lower World. From a photo, it can be inferred that the reason why great uncle Zeng transformed the lower world is that he lost his beloved just like the real person, so he wants to truly understand "The Heron and the Boy" 》 We must first answer why a real person would make a different choice from Great-uncle Zeng? And this is the focus of the in-depth analysis in the second half. Finally, we will answer a very important question that is not mentioned in many analyzes, that is, what if The lower realm is hell , so does the final collapse of the lower realm mean that hell will be destroyed and no more people will die? The answer is of course no. If you read the above content carefully, you will find that we are all wrong when describing the relationship between great-uncle Zeng and the lower realm. I use "transform" instead of "create" because the lower world was not created by Uncle Zeng, nor did it appear because of meteorites. The tower of meteorites is just a passage between the two worlds. Uncle Zeng obtained magic from the stones of meteorites , so he had the idea to transform the world. The ability Wow wow wow and the black humanoid are not the creations of great uncle , but the souls that originally existed in the lower world. From the conversation between the old pelican and the real person, it can be known that it was great uncle who brought them into this world and refers to Dante's Divine Comedy here. Dante Kiriko, who created the other identity of all the real people and traveled through hell, can be regarded as the ferryman of hell. The ocean is the first level of Limbo, symbolizing the wandering place of unbaptized souls. Heron, Huomei and Zengjiugongze Representing Dante's three guides, Virgil who met Dante in the woods and led him into hell symbolizes happiness and enlightenment, Beatrice who led Dante to heaven, and Bernardo who finally told Dante the truth about the Trinity in heaven. The various sins of the Parrot Kingdom also symbolize the different levels of hell, allowing real people to witness the sins of human nature such as indulgence, gluttony, greed... and other sins. It is also like the Divine Comedy, which is a tower-like structure with a wide top and a narrow bottom (slip of the tongue). Finally, the Parrot King also symbolizes the most hellish and deepest level. The original sin of the bottom is also because Zhenmao is the only person who returns to the upper world with his memory to understand the truth of the lower world, so Hayao Miyazaki named him. Let’s talk about the in-depth analysis of the first half of "The Heron and the Boy" first. This once again states that the above interpretations are not official settings , but the results of our own piecing together and brainstorming based on clues in the movie. The purpose is to allow everyone to better understand what the movie is saying rather than to draw a conclusion. If you really can't at all Accepting the above content, you can also regard the entire movie as a dream that a real person had when he had a fever, because dreams have no absolute causal relationship and time. Although this explanation may be reasonable, it will leave a lot of thinking space. So in the second half, we We will use the novel "What Kind of Life Do You Want to Live" to analyze more deeply why real people made different decisions from my great-uncle, and the real message Hayao Miyazaki wants to convey through this movie will only become more and more exciting. Please don't miss it. If you think I did a good job, please like, subscribe, and turn on the little bell so that you don't miss the next updates. Movies are not only entertainment, but also the epitome of all kinds of life . There will always be a picture that makes you stop. Welcome all friends who love movies and life to come and learn this ordinary and great art of film studies with us . See you next time when you study movies ~
