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The Boy and the Heron poster

The Boy and the Heron

2023 · 2h 4m · Animation, Fantasy, Drama

IMDb 7.3 Metacritic 91 RT 96%

Watch it tonight. This is Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece—a visually stunning, emotionally complex fantasy that explores grief and identity with the kind of imagination that justifies the Oscar hype. The high critical scores are earned, and even if it's occasionally dreamlike to the point of opacity, it's the kind of film that rewires how you see animation.

Plot

While the Second World War rages, the teenage Mahito, haunted by his mother's tragic death, is relocated from Tokyo to the serene rural home of his new stepmother Natsuko, a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the boy's mother. As he tries to adjust, this strange new world grows even stranger following the appearance of a persistent gray heron, who perplexes and bedevils Mahito, dubbing him the "long-awaited one."

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