Oh the humanity! "Look Back" yells from the rooftops why art needs to exist in the age of AI

“Why do you draw?” A seemingly innocuous question that in truth carries immense weight. In “Look Back,” the film based on Tatsuki Fujimoto’s one-shot manga, two teenage girls bond over their love of creating manga. Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto explored forests and hunted for bugs as a child, and wanted to recreate that feeling in a video game, eventually leading to the creation of “The Legend of Zelda.” Hayao Miyazaki’s works are tinged with autobiographical moments, such as his mother’s hospitalization with tuberculosis — an element of both “My Neighbor Totoro” and “The Wind Rises” — or his father building rudders for fighter planes during World War II, a piece of his own history we see alluded to in the Oscar-winning “The Boy and The Heron.” And for Miyazaki in particular, art and life are nearly one and the same as we come to learn in this year’s documentary that sneakily landed on Max this summer, “Hayao Miyazaki and The Heron.” The documentary chronicles the entire production timeline for “The Boy and The Heron,” starting with Miyazaki announcing his retirement in 2013 through to the film’s Oscar win this year. For Fujino in “Look Back.” It is driven by the desire for human connection, by wanting to express one’s self to someone, to honor someone who has passed to ensure that they are remembered. “Look Back” yells from the rooftops that art is tough, it is work, but the reward is it connects us like nothing else can.