THE BOY AND THE HERON It used to be that directing movies was a young man’s game, a vocation for raging bulls, armed only with a whip, a chair and their own ferocious arrogance. But many of 2023’s most striking films have been made by directors who have maintained dogged independence and epic visions well into their eighties: Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO, Scorsese’s …Flower Moon and this month Ridley Scott’s Napoleon.
You might struggle with the idea that a man who has spent his career drawing wide-eyed toddlers, giant teddy bears, teenage witches and flying pigs belongs in this company, but Hayao Miyazaki may well prove to be the greatest of them all. Now aged 82, looks to be his final film – though seasoned Miyazaki-heads will know he has been threatening retirement since the late 20th century. It begins, once again, in the primal Miyazaki scene. In 1943, Mahito is a 12-year-old boy, terrified by the firebombing of Tokyo, helpless as his mother’s
