The Japanese animation (动漫) director Hayao Miyazaki, a workaholic auteur generally considered to be one of the art form’s most accomplished masters, has been trying to retire since 1997. “I know I’ve mentioned I’m retiring many times in the past,” he told a press conference, “So I know that many of you might think, ‘oh again’. This time is for real.” Cut to 2023: The release of Hayao Miyazaki’s final “final” film, The Boy and the Heron.
With The Boy and the Heron, Miyazaki wanted to go back even further to his childhood. Indeed, the film’s opening scene is inspired by Miyazaki’s experience of growing up during World War Two. Much like an infant Miyazaki, Mahito is evacuated from Tokyo to live in the relative safety of the countryside. It is here, tormented (折磨) by grief, living miserably with his father and his father’s new wife, that he meets the nominal Heron: a half-man, half-bird creature who mockingly tells Mahito that his mother is still alive. It is around this point, as the fish chant for Mahito to “join us”, as the frogs climb over his face, that The Boy and the Heron takes a turn for the strange. Having followed the Heron, Mahito finds himself stranded somewhere between life and death.
How do we live? It is a question that has haunted Miyazaki, a director always torn between optimism and despair, for most of his career: How do you live—as one character in The Boy and the Heron describes it—in “a foolish world filled with murder and thievery”? Perhaps, without getting into specifics, the film’s ending suggests another interpretation: Legacies, successors, even art itself, none of it actually matters. All that matters is that people—Miyazaki’s family, his friends, even the audience—continue to live on, to engage with the real world rather than retreat into fantasy.
【小题1】What do the words “oh again” indicate in paragraph 1?
| A．People’s doubt about Miyazaki’s retirement. |
| B．People’s concern about Miyazaki’s health. |
| C．People’s eagerness for Miyazaki’s animations. |
| D．People’s admiration for Miyazaki’s artistic achievements. |
【小题2】What does the author intend to do in paragraph 2?
| A．Add some background information. |
| B．Share Miyazaki’s growing-up experiences. |
| C．Introduce the film. |
| D．Display the latest film-shooting techniques. |
【小题3】What does the underlined word “haunted” in paragraph 3 mean?
| A．Inspired. | B．Bothered. | C．Scared. | D．Relieved. |
【小题4】Where is this text most likely from?
| A．A diary. | B．A travel guide. | C．A novel. | D．A magazine. |
