This movie touched on themes like memory and loss and perseverance and determination and the 5 elements and consumption of food and breathing and meditation and going inside oneself and looking out at the world and listening to your own intervoice and balancing that with being mindful of those in your life. it was such an incredible film that suddenly and slowly addresses a wide Depth of topics in a very gentle way.

Dreamy (almost trippy) movie. Not much plot but very beautiful regardless.

It’s a thrilling journey for both young viewers and those with more cause to ponder the afterlife. A fine bow from one of the great directors.

The Boy and the Heron, while typically bursting with imaginative elements, is also narratively tangled and a bit confusing, and falls far short of Mr. Miyazaki’s best work.

Kyle Smith

Wall Street Journal

If this film is Miyazaki’s true bow, it’s a magnificent final flourish that folds together many of the thematic and aesthetic threads he’s explored through his career: man’s relationship to nature, the majesty of flight, the twin pulls of love and loss. It’s stunning and inscrutable and measures among the best of his works.