There is an intimacy that reverberates in all of Hayao Miyazaki’s works, from Howl’s Moving Castle to Spirited Away to My Neighbor Totoro to his newest film, The Boy and the Heron, rumored to be his last. It concerns the 12-year-old boy Mahito Maki, whose mother is killed in a fire. Upon moving to the countryside, a gray heron informs Mahito that his mother is alive, but lost in a separate universe. The story unfolds from there. Though a work of fantasy, the movie’s warmth and emotion does not come by way of romantic exaggeration or nostalgia. It is rooted in the basic things that divinize human life: tragedy, compassion, pain, and love. If it is indeed Miyazaki’s final offering, The Boy and the Heron is a worthy swan song. —Jack Sullivan