★★★★

Never one to retire gracefully – and he’s got previous – Hayao Miyazaki’s latest swan song is a delectably well prickled endeavour, as rich in plot as visual flair. It’s a fantastical tale, for all the grounding themes of grief, loss and loneliness. An expansive world illuminates Miyazaki’s dazzling vistas, untethered perimeters and boundless imagination expanding across the screen. The film’s international title – The Boy and the Heron – is rather less prosaic than the Japanese original, which borrows from the 1937 novel How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino. It does, however, belie a stronger narrative drive here than in many of Miyazaki’s past, more cerebral, triumphs.