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The New Hayao Miyazaki Doc Is Obsessed with Death
In Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron, the legendary animation director loses close friends to old age and grapples with the twilight of his own life.
Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron retroactively turns the two mildly hagiographic Max docs into a sobering triptych, functioning as a kind of conclusion to a sustained look at a flawed creative genius who routinely defies age and pulls himself out of retirement to work on his art once more — until he comes up to the limits of whether he can do so much longer. In this age of hyper-brand management where practically every celebrity doc requires direct sign-offs from the subject themselves, it’s striking to watch a document of a global cultural luminary being so nakedly human. The doc ends on an uplifting note, capping off Miyazaki’s seven-year odyssey with The Boy and the Heron with footage of his team watching their Oscar win on television, but by then it’s hard to feel triumphant.
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