I rented Howl's Moving Castle because Spirited Away is my family's favorite movie. The kids love it, watch it over and over again and the adults like it very much as well. And outside the family, a lot of critics think it’s one of the better movies ever and it was the highest grossing Japanese film in history.
Myself? I've never watched Spirited Away. One of its main characters is a creepy old lady that totally freaks me out. I shudder every time I walk through the living room and see her on the screen. She is very, very disturbing and I want no part of any movie with a character like that in it.
So, as you can imagine, I was wary of Howl's Moving Castle and became extremely uncomfortable when very early in the movie a witch turns a young girl into an old lady. I was ready to bolt for the bedroom and the comfort of the drugs, alcohol and the computer, but I steeled myself and gave it a few minutes. Fortunately, it turned out that Sophie, the central character in the film, was not a creepy old lady. It took awhile to see it, but she was actually quite beautiful.
Ha ha, I bet your thinking, yea, another movie where the seemingly ugly character's inner beauty shines through in the end. Well, perhaps, but there is no glass slipper, no changing into a swan, no revalatory moment, no epiphany, no crescendo of strings in the soundtrack while everyone recognizes Sophie's inner beauty and they all live happily ever after. Howl's Moving Castle is far too sophisticated for that kind of movie staple nonsense. Hayao Miyazaki has proper respect for the intelligence and artistic sensitivities of children.
I say proper respect because both Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away are not movies you could pitch to a Hollywood studio as children's movies, yet children love them and happily watch them repeatedly. Yes, I know, that may be true of classic Disney movies, or recent Pixar films, but Miyazaki's work is significantly different than the standard American forumula. There are no cute sidekicks, no rousing battles, nor even tragic deaths á la Bambi.
Miyazak's work is about story and character, yet it goes deeper, it engages the child in a realm between dreams and intellect, in an abstract reality that only a few adult artists such as Miyazaki and Roald Dahl have been able to interpret but which almost any child can immediately understand.
Yea, you’d think that when a young girl gets turned into an old lady at the beginning of a movie that the rest of the film will be about how she tries to undo the spell and regain her youth. But such is not the case with Howl. There are scenes in which Sophie indicates she would like to have her youth back, but she’s not on a quest to achieve it and that plot-line is not the driving force of the narrative.
I wouldn’t describe any of the particular themes of Howl, and there are many, as the driving force of the narrative. The story is set in a European-ish land with towering Alps-like mountains in the background. The time is vaguely early twentieth century. The roads are populated by steam powered automobiles and slow-moving propeller driven flying machines fill the skies. A senseless and brutal war provides the narrative arc, but Howl is not a movie about war. Nevertheless, there is talk of war in the beginning and then the war begins and gets worse, taking its toll on the characters as the movie progresses. The movie ends when the war ends and the war ends as a result of the actions of the characters. Yet, as I said, the movie is not about war. War merely provides the external framework.
Howl, voiced by Christian Bale, is a wizard. Howl’s castle is, as the title indicates, a moving castle. It moves around the wastelands and is occasionally spotted by the townspeople who believe that Howl eats the hearts of beautiful young women. Sophie is a young, plain girl voiced by Emily Mortimer. She is turned into an extremely old woman voiced by Jean Simmons by the Witch of the Waste, who is indelibly voiced by Lauren Bacall. Calcifer is a fire demon voiced by Billy Chrystal who provides a particularly understated performance by his standards. Calcifer is enslaved by Howl and uses his power to heat, move, and hide the castle. Madame Suliman, voiced by Blyther Danner, is the King’s sorceress. Her dog is an important character as well. Turnip-head is a scarecrow who hops around and helps out Sophie at key parts of the film.
So what’s it about? Hard to say.There is a war, but it’s not about war. There are questions of beauty, but it’s not about beauty. There are issues of vengeance, but it is not about revenge. The themes of community, loyalty and betrayal are present, but hardly omnipresent. It’s a complex story told with genuine respect for its audience. You can come to your own conclusions regarding what it's about, but I think you'll find that even if it's about nothing at all, it's extremely good storytelling.
All of those themes are handled with quiet depth. Miyazaki never overtly draws attention to any of them. Almost everything that happens in the movie is open to a variety of interpretations. It bears repeated watching. It’s not like Pokeman. I don’t think the kids’ brains are rotting a little bit more with each viewing. The opposite is more likely true. As far as I'm concerned, they can watch it as many times as they want.
The narrative arc of the character of the Witch of the Waste is illustrative of the movie’s sensibility. Her growth and transformation as a character is one of the genuinely interesting elements of the movie. She is a fearsome monster in the beginning. Alternately beautiful and double-chinned scary she is contemptuous of Sophie who she describes as a “tacky little girl in a tacky little hat shop” and turns her into an old lady out of petty spite.
The next time we meet the witch is in a very strange scene where Sophie and the witch are walking up the stairs of the castle to see Madam Suliman. The stairs are steep and long and there appears to be some kind of magic spell that makes them exceptionally difficult to climb. As the witch climbs the stairs she huffs and puffs and sweats and begins to shrink. Her double chin quadruples until she is little more than a blob of jelly and it’s difficult to tell where her 16th chin ends and the rest of her body begins. Sophie taunts her as they walk up the stairs, saying how happy she would be to help if only she were younger, but the witch says she only knows how to make spells not remove them. But as the witch transforms into an ugly blob of huffing and puffing jelly, Sophie transforms as well. She goes from mildly taunting the witch to feeling sorry for her, even asking one of the King’s attendants to help.
When they make it to the top, Madame Suliman strips the witch of her powers and she becomes a helpless old lady. Suliman explains that that’s what she really looks like without the benefit of magic. I won’t give away the plot details at this point, but Howl shows up, hijinks ensue, and they escape the King’s castle. Sophie brings along the witch and becomes her protector and nursemaid. During this time the witch goes through another transformation. Although she remains old, she becomes beautiful, but as with everything else in the movie, her transformation is not that simple.
Note that with the witch’s transformation, two major characters have been transformed into ugly old ladies and become beautiful. And their beauty does not come from obvious changes in the way they are drawn. It comes from the way they act. Miyazaki pulls off the nearly miraculous feat of getting us to see the same thing in an entirely different way. And I stress again that there is no hammer blow involved. No character is saying “wow look at how the old lady has changed. These changes, and all the other important themes in the movie happen unobtrusively and naturally in the course of the narrative. And again, what Hollywood studio would even consider producing a movie with two ugly old ladies as main characters and no clear moral lessons?
Yes, dissertations likely will be written on Howl's Moving Castle, but don’t be afraid. It’s a pleasant movie to watch with your brain turned off. It is well-paced with no dead spots. The animation is consistently great and nearly transcendental in many scenes.
But I’ll give Miyazaki the last word:
"Personally I am very pessimistic," Miyazaki says. "But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can't help but bless them for a good future. Because I can't tell that child, 'Oh, you shouldn't have come into this life.' And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making."
Perhaps this is why he tells children's stories. "Well, yes. I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy."
I ask if he feels he's managed that already and he chuckles and shakes his head. Nor does he feel that film can be employed as a force for good. "Film doesn't have that kind of power," he says, gloomily. "It only exerts its influence when it stirs patriots up against other nations, or taps into aggressive, violent urges."
This is a black diagnosis indeed. But then, inexplicably, Miyazaki's mood lightens. Perhaps it's the sunshine, or the cigarette, or the fact that the interview is almost over. "Of course," he relents, "if, as artists, we try to tap into that soul level - if we say that life is worth living and the world is worth living in - then something good might come of it." He shrugs. "Maybe that's what these films are doing. They are my way of blessing the child"
Yep.
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