The Boy and the Heron

Hayao Miyazaki’s self-proclaimed final film—though he previously made the same claim about Princess Mononoke and The Wind Rises—takes a maximalist approach to storytelling and reckons with the legacy of a life rich in contradiction. In the shadow of World War II, twelve-year-old Mahito, bereft and sullen, is displaced to a countryside estate with his father and new stepmother—who also happens to be his aunt. Trolling the grounds and sky above is an overfamiliar, pestering gray heron who leads Mahito deep into a realm of hallucinatory, time-bending fantasy, where he confronts a magical fisherwoman, blobby spirits called warawara, a parakeet army, and his own past and future.