Review: Hayao Miyazaki’s artistry shines out of every frame in 'The Boy and the Heron'

It looks like an Oscar photo-finish on Mar. 10 for best animated film between "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" and "The Boy and the Heron," the latest landmark from Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, 83, who had threatened to retire before returning for this beauty.

Given the shortage of animated family films, don't miss the chance to see "The Boy and the Heron," now in theaters (some in IMAX) using voices from famous English-speaking actors including Christian Bale, Robert Pattinson, and Mark Hamill. It's unmissable and unforgettable.

Miyazaki won an honorary Oscar in 2014 for impeccable hand-drawn animation (with a smidgen of digital help) in such classics as "Spirited Away," "Howl's Moving Castle" and "Princes Mononoke" -- most reflecting his favored themes of childhood, war, pacifism, family and environmental activism.

So why did the manga guru come out of retirement after a decade to make "The Boy and the Heron"? As his closest colleagues will tell you, he wanted to draw his own life story and put it on film. For that, audiences around the globe are all beneficiaries.

For what a story it is. Loosely structured on the 1937 novel "How Do You Live," the film reflects Miyazaki's own boyhood in the shadow of WW2 through 12-year-old Mahito Maki (voiced by Luca Padovan). After the death of his nurse mother in a hospital firebombing, Mahito is evacuated from Tokyo to the countryside by his munitions factory owner father Shoichi (Bale).

A year later, dad has married Natsuko (Gemma Chan), his late wife's younger sister, who is now pregnant. In Mahito's eyes, the marriage is a betrayal of his beloved mother, a fact that further alienates him from his father, plus the new school where he is bullied and a rural community made up of the old, the sickly and children who are forced into servitude.

Mahito's only friend is a grey heron (Pattinson) who grows teeth and develops the power of speech as he lures Mahito to a tower in the woods by falsely claiming the boy will be able to reunite with his dead mother. Instead, the heron delivers only a watery mirage.

The tower is the last place anyone saw Natsuko's granduncle (Hamill). It's there that Mahito finds an endangered Natsuko and fantastical wonders including a talking pelican (Willem Dafoe) and a parakeet king (Dave Bautista) leading an army of ravenous avian soldiers.

Miyazaki, working with 60 animators, outdoes himself with miraculous visuals that merge reality with illusory flights of fancy, such as the Warawara, cutie creatures that inflate like blobs at any sign of danger. Still, there's no disguising the risks facing Mahito as he comes of age in wartime.

The film's deeper themes may fly over the heads of younger viewers who will still be enchanted by the magic and the monsters Miyazaki conjures up from his dreamscape about the joys and terrors of coming of age.

For Miyazaki, maturity comes from Mahito accepting the world as it is instead of running from it. Is there an answer to his question, how do you live? Yes -- by learning the difference between fantasy and reality, and taking responsibility for those you love who love you in return. Miyazaki's artistry shines out of every frame in "The Boy and the Heron." It's his personal best.