The late-19th-early-20th-century (sort of) Europe imagined in some of the best, and best-loved, films of Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki is a place of rolling green hills out of the work of landscape painter Constable and blinding fields of flowers out of Renoir’s canvases. It’s a place of unexplainable magic and reliable charm, where the interior of every train or dirigible compartment is a super-cozy construction of burnished wood and crushed velvet, and the only thing that could possibly hinder your enjoyment of whatever trip you’re taking is the hand poking through the window; the hand, that is, of a giant flying robot intent on kidnapping you. A recent New Yorker profile of Miyazaki revealed that his idealized Europe was birthed in his brain as a childhood escape from the bombed-out ruins all around him in real life-the filmmaker was born in Tokyo about a year before America and Japan went to war. In his most recent films, the 1999 eco-fable Princess Mononoke and the eerily beautiful Spirited Away, Miyazaki took a hiatus from his mythical West; both films were set in Japans that were just as uniquely Miyazakian as any of the settings of his films. Still, I imagine a good number of fans will rejoice to learn that Howl’s Moving Castle (which is being released in a subtitled and dubbed version; the former is reviewed here) is a return to the Euro milieu, and is a (somewhat) more straightforward narrative than the enigmatic Spirited. That the movie is also stunningly beautiful and strangely moving is, of course, something of a given because of its inspired creator. Based on a young-adult fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones, Castle features, like most Miyazaki pictures, a teenage(ish) heroine of almost indomitable pluck. This Sophie certainly needs said quality, given that one of the travails she has to contend with is her transformation into a 90-year-old woman at the hands of the grotesque Witch of the Waste. Sophie seeks refuge and aid in the moving castle of the title, the creation and home of the young, mysterious wizard Howl. Once the castle, which is powered by a cranky fire-demon named Calcifer (a deceptively simply rendered creature who’s one of Miyazaki’s most winning characters), sets down, it becomes a kind of dimensional portal through which the kind but tortured Howl often disappears in order to do battle in a war of unclear provenance. The plot is pretty convoluted, but Miyazaki has a very good handle on it and lavishes his customary heart, humor, and inventiveness on every situation he depicts. So much more than a kid’s movie, it’s another visionary triumph in an exceptional body of work.
Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.