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Recently I think maybe Im going to die, saysHayao Miyazaki.
He smiles, hands clasped behind his head.
I imagine thanking everyone.
(It wasquietly addedto the Max service last week along withthe film itself.)
The statement will come to feel like a premature indulgence.
We watch as he plugs away on the film and loses close friends to old age.
The bodies are piling up.
Death hovers over every other scene.
Its not often you get to see a living legend seriously grapple with the din of mortality.
Hayao Miyazaki and the Heronis not an entirely accessible documentary on its own.
(Another, the four-part10 Years With Hayao Miyazaki, is available on Crunchyroll.
Whats a little different about Arakawas doc is how purely melancholic it feels.
In others, Arakawa uses it to pin down an emotion Miyazaki tries to swerve away from.
People said Id be the first to go.
Why am I still alive?
he says in one scene, before breaking into another smile.
We watch Miyazaki age into his 80s.
We see his body and face shrink a little; that puckish smile grows more weathered.
His hands, which have created so much beauty, start to tremble.
Miyazaki may abandon retirement once again to embark on another project, but the man is now 83.
Death is a fact of life, and not even geniuses can outrun this biological truth.
