Ealing Picturehouse, a new cinema complex that cost £13 million to build, opened its doors in October. The eight-screen, 900-seat cinema, might just be the swankiest new cinema in London. The state of the art building doubles as a cafe and bar. You can grab something to eat and drink on the ground floor before making your way up to your screening, where plushy red seats await you.
Peter Mason, leader of Ealing council, said: “The opening of Ealing Picturehouse is a testament to our rich cultural and cinematic history and our ongoing commitment to arts and culture”.
Claire Binns, managing director of Picturehouse Cinemas, said: “Picturehouse is all about showing the best films from around the world: films for everyone, young and old. So to open in Ealing, which has such a rich history of film production, is so exciting“
It is fitting then that it screened Studio Ghibli’s latest movie in its original language. The Japanese animators are one of the most influential studios of all time and their impact on popular culture is only growing, even as their greatest hero steps away.
Legendary director Hayao Miyazaki’s final film, The Boy and the Heron, is an ode to his childhood. It was inspired by one of his favourite childhood books: Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 bildungsroman ‘How do you live?’ He won the Oscar for Spirited Away in 2001 and has now completed the prized double with his swan song, which won this year’s Golden Globe award for best animated feature.
The partly autobiographical story follows Mahito, the 12 year-old protagonist, through his grappling with grief amid the ruin of WW2 Japan. After his mother perishes in a hospital fire in war-torn Tokyo a Heron tells him she lives on in another world and proposes to take him to her. Angry at the bird’s denial of death he pursues it into this fantastical universe which mirrors our own to meet her when she was his age.
Imbued with the power to control the element her parting words, ‘I’m not afraid of fire’, help him to find closure. They are separated by a world falling apart presided over by an ailing granduncle resembling Miyazaki himself (who turned 83 a few days before he won his award) after Mahito chose not to take over his tools of creation, stones which could be arranged to bring order or chaos to the universe beyond the portal near his ancestor’s estate.
In his absence, this master storyteller worries about the fate of the studio he created. He expects it will fall apart without his Midas touch but asks the young to take over his work in the hope that his legacy will be built on, not merely cherished. His work is done, now it’s up to the next generation to bring worlds to life with the power of magical realism. We are storytelling animals after all; our myths are as real to us as reality itself. Few possess that magic touch but Hayao Miyazaki inspired us with his.
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