How Hayao Miyazaki’s Films Continue to Take Us to the Skies

Few filmmakers can claim the same heights of whimsy, artistry and storytelling as writer-director Hayao Miyazaki, whose modern-day fables seem to prove that having one’s head in the clouds isn’t a fault, but a virtue — in more ways than one. From his 1988 breakthrough “My Neighbor Totoro” to his 2001 Oscar-winning animated feature, “Spirited Away,” the sky is one of Miyazaki’s favorite playgrounds, where flight is about more than just elevation; it’s about transcendence.

Characters in flight often traverse physical and spiritual realms. They move between worlds and states of being. And in the case of Miyazaki’s latest, “The Boy and the Heron,” flight even serves as a gateway between life and death.

Flying into Adulthood

Miyazaki’s protagonists are often children or young adults forced to confront the realities of a flawed world. These characters’ moments of awakening often arrive at the tail end of some grand, perhaps even perilous, adventure — and typically while they’re suspended in midair.

“Spirited Away” epitomizes Miyazaki’s body of work, combining folklore and magic with his meticulously hand-drawn illustrations. Its protagonist is Chihiro, a young girl who takes a job at a bathhouse for the spirits in order to save her parents, who’ve been transformed into pigs. Chihiro is at a point of transition: The film starts as her family is in the midst of moving to a new home, and Chihiro herself is at that preteen age where she swings between the fearful naïveté of childhood and the willfulness of adolescence. She’s forced to bear the responsibility of her fantastical circumstances and guide her family back to the human world.

Her moment of revelation occurs as she’s flying through the sky with Haku, a river spirit who can transform into a dragon. Chihiro recalls a childhood memory that reveals Haku’s true name, releasing him from the curse that binds him. The film, like so many of Miyazaki’s others, suggests that the key to maturing, and to becoming the hero of your own story, is retaining the childhood dreams, feelings, thoughts, ideas and memories that bring us back to our most intimate selves. In Miyazaki’s work, flight is not just about traversing distances but also moving through time: childhood to adulthood, past to present and future.