Hayao Miyazaki's new documentary is obsessed with death

“Lately, I've been thinking that I might die,” says Hayao Miyazaki. He smiles and folds his hands behind his head. “I imagine that I'm thanking everyone.” The quote, which is striking in its casualness, is at the top of Kaku Arakawa's Hayao Miyazaki and the Heronan NHK documentary distributed here in North America by GKIDS that follows the legendary animation director during the seven-year production of his latest film. The Boy and the Heron. (It was quietly added to the Max schedule last week, along with the film itself.) That statement will feel like a premature indulgence. As the months pass and we delve deeper into the documentary, the director begins to grapple with the deaths of others instead.

We watch him work on the film and lose close friends to old age, many of whom are staples of the Studio Ghibli universe: Michiyo Yasuda, a color designer and confidant; Isao Takahata, his friend, collaborator, rival, and co-founder of Ghibli; Yasuo Ootsuka, a mentor; even a dear assistant. “That's what happens in the autumn of life,” he says, shuffling to his desk after learning of the latest departure. “My goodness. The bodies are piling up.”

Death looms over every other scene. The documentary doesn't linger on the COVID pandemic, but the sudden ubiquity of face masks reminds one of their devastating impact. When another mentor, producer Junzo Nakajima, visits Miyazaki's studio, the conversation quickly turns to the older man's failing health. An unspoken question hovers over the goodbyes as he gets into his car to leave: Will these men ever see each other again? It's not often that you get to see a living legend seriously grapple with the din of mortality. In many ways, it's a privilege to witness, but to see a man outlive so many friends is a terrible thing.

Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron is not a completely accessible documentary. You have to not only The Boy and the Heron but also Miyazaki's broader biography to really enjoy what is being shown to you. You may find it interesting how each character in The Boy and the Heron corresponds to someone in the director's life, but you probably wouldn't quite understand the irony if, for example, Miyazaki viewed his long-suffering producer Toshio Suzuki as the scheming heron. Poor guy.

This biography is covered in detail in many other NHK documentaries, two of which are also available on Max: The kingdom of dreams and madnessdirected by Mami Sunada, which also takes care of the filming of As the wind risesand 2016 The Eternal Manalso directed by Arakawa, who accompanied Miyazaki through the development of his first CGI creation, “Boro the Caterpillar.” (Another, the four-part 10 years with Hayao Miyazakiis available on Crunchyroll.) Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron retrospectively transforms the two slightly hagiographic Max documentaries into a sobering triptych, serving as a kind of conclusion to an in-depth look at a flawed creative genius who regularly defies age and emerges from retirement to work on his art once more—until he reaches the limits of whether he can do so much longer.

What is slightly different about Arakawa's documentary is its sheer melancholy. We see, for example, how the death of Isao Takahata, Miyazaki's mentor and rival, weighs on him most during the development of . The Boy and the Heron. Although he far eclipsed Takahata in fame, he clearly admired and loved the man and coveted the recognition he rarely received. So long after his death, Takahata remains a major part of Miyazaki's mind, so much so that Miyazaki – not entirely in jest – attributes everything from the weather to the loss of a pencil to the vengeful spirit of his late mentor.

Arakawa likes to switch between several different scenes within a few seconds – to create the feeling of intrusive thoughts – in order to establish thematic and emotional associations. This device serves several functions: in some places it is used to connect aspects of Miyazaki's own life with images seen in his films; in one example we see Miyazaki watching a small child stack two toads, which the Doc smashes into the scene. heron where a swarm of toads overwhelms Mahito, the protagonist. In other scenes, Arakawa uses it to capture an emotion that Miyazaki wants to avoid. There is something goblin-like about the director, trying to underline a vulnerable statement with a wry remark or a wry smile. “People said I'd be the first to go. Why am I still alive?” he says in one scene before breaking into a smile again. Arakawa follows with a clip from buckeye where Porco tells the story of how he saw a tunnel in the sky filled with the planes of the many pilots who had fallen before him.

In this age of hyper-brand management, where virtually every celebrity documentary requires the direct consent of the protagonists, it is remarkable to see a doc about a global cultural luminary that is so unashamedly human. Of course Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron is still an awesome work that leaves out a few messier strands of the man's life that Miyazaki fans might be interested in. For example, we learn nothing about his son Goro, whose inability to live up to his father's shadow is a major theme in The kingdom of dreams and madness. But these omissions can be read as a further reflection of Arakawa's main theme, namely the inevitability of death. We see Miyazaki age into his 80s. We see his body and face shrink a little; his mischievous smile becomes more and more weathered. His hands, which created so much beauty, begin to shake. The documentary ends on an uplifting note, crowning Miyazaki's seven-year odyssey with The Boy and the Heron with footage of his team watching the Oscar win on TV, but then it's hard to feel any sense of triumph. Miyazaki may yet come out of retirement to devote himself to another project, but the man is now 83. Death is a fact of life, and not even geniuses can escape this biological truth.