Howl’s Moving Castle is the latest work by master animator Hayao Miyazaki, the man behind the oscar winning Spirited Away as well as many other films and TV series. It tells the story of Sophie, a normal girl who works in her mother’s hat shop, who gets mixed up with Howl, a powerful wizard. The evil Witch of the Waste believes Sophie to be someone special to Howl and curses the young woman, turning her appearance into that of a 90-year-old. Sophie leaves town and stumbles into Howl’s Moving Castle with the help of a scarecrow. The rest of the story is Howl trying to evade capture by Madam Suliman, the king’s personal sorceress who either wants Howl to fight for them in the war they are waging or take away his powers.
This is the first film that Miyazaki has directed that he did not write, instead basing it on the book of the same name by Diana Wynne Jones. It’s a story filled with vivid imagery and wonderful touches. In a pseudo-victorian Europe, which relies on coal burning, steam driven machines, but also has flying battleships, aeroplanes and lots of wizards and witches it reminded me a lot of the TV shows I watched when I was young that are now merely memories swaythed in nostalgia.
The version on general release has English voices dubbed in for the original Japanese ones but they have hired quality voice actors with the likes of Billy Crystal, Lauren Bacall, Christian Bale, Jena Malone and Emily Mortimer turning in often excellent performances. Miyazaki is rumoured to insist every single frame be hand drawn and unique (no re-use of things like running scenes that you see in much of Manga and animation in general). It doesn’t have the slickness to it that more modern computer generated films have, but then it has a texture that they seem unable to achieve too. Having said that it is still stunningly beautiful and ably shows that regular animation is not a deceased artform but can battle it out with the young pretender that is CGI.
The film has been accused of lacking any real story but I didn’t find that, it seemed fairly clear to me, though the ending seemed a little weak after the layers of action and tension had been built up and up. Overall I guess my greatest criticism was that the movie felt a little too nostalgic, creating a European-esque world that never really existed outside of cartoons that have long since drifted into the annals of history. Yet through this it is still packed with beautiful imagery, fascinating little tidbits, joy inspiring quirks and details and fantastic characterisation.
If you have kids it’s well worth taking them to see a film that treads a different path to the features presented by Pixar, Disney and Dreamworks, a path that seems truly magical rather than just entertaining. For everyone else it will give you a chance to enjoy what animation used to be about while getting lost with characters you’ll come to love. I have been striving for a word that sums up the experience and I think enchanting is probably the closest I’ll get.
You can check out the official movie site here and the trailer at Apple here.
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