‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ — a gorgeous mixed bag
A podcast I’m a big fan of, Blank Check with Griffin and David, is going through the filmography of Hayao Miyazaki, so before I listen to each episode I want to get my own bloggorific thoughts written down here.
If you enjoy informal fantasy movie content along the lines of these Ghibli pieces, you’re in luck — because not only will I be returning to voice my thoughts on Nausicaä when I have finished reading the original manga, but I have also borrowed the original Howl’s Moving Castle novel from a friend and will be talking later on about how it compares to this film.
However, for now I want to express my thoughts on just the film, rather than its ability to adapt its source. And Oh Boy is this a mixed one …
Howl’s was the first Studio Ghibli film I saw, mostly based on its being a book adaptation. I saw that it adapted a British Fantasy Novel (a type of book I am quite fond of) and was not disappointed in the slightest.
Only later did I come to realise that Howl’s is very much the Return of the Jedi or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade of its creators. Divisive, dismissed, downtrodden as the worst among greats—given this is Studio Ghibli, a bit of “praising with faint damnation” if I’ve ever heard it — and not only that, but seen as a bad movie overall by fans of the very popular book that it was based on.
As I said, I am yet to read Diana Wynne Jones’s original text and as a fan of the British Fantasy Novel form, I am fully expecting to love it more than Miyazaki’s version. Yet, I will never see Howl’s as simply some odd duck in his filmography.
As a secondary world, diesel-powered, wizards-and-monsters fantasy film, you might say Howl’s Moving Castle is very clearly more my-sort-of-thing than say, My Neighbor Totoro; it’s the closest that Miyazaki would come to echoing the groundbreaking Laputa: Castle in the Sky in world and form.
Even better, Howl’s as a movie is a generation ahead of Laputa in terms of visuals and audio production, offering a sumptuous and unbeatable presentation quality that cannot be matched by 3D, CGI animations. There is too much to like for me to dismiss the film.
I suppose every other time I watch this (maybe every two-and-a-bit years since it released) I find my mind wandering in the middle — the plot of Howl’s cannot hold a candle to Laputa or Spirited Away. Then, the next time I re-watch it, I love it all over again.
The Merry-Go-Round of Life soundtrack theme, the intricacy of the castle itself and the flashiness of the magic are just so fascinating to behold; the sort of thing I wished the Harry Potter films properly went for instead of the weird, glum, and monochromatic style the last few films had. Perhaps that is why I cannot hate or even dislike Howl’s Moving Castle for its failings.
Steamboy, another intricately designed and over-the-top fantasy film, suffers in my opinion from the flabby bloat that others accuse Howl’s of, but I already have several excellent steampunk movies that I can watch instead of Steamboy. Howl’s is really only an “also-ran” among Miyazaki’s oeuvre.
There aren’t that many British Fantasy Novel adaptations that really run with the epic fantasy in this fashion, despite the fact that Hollywood always tries. I like to imagine what an animated Northern Lights film could have been like, or a version of Earthsea that wasn’t nonsensical and boring like the one that Studio Ghibli actually brought us.
So perhaps that is it. Howl’s Moving Castle is just rare enough that I have to cherish its existence even with the film’s many foibles. And even with its narrative wobbliness, it’s not as if the film is ever boring — it still brings eye candy in its sumptuousness and touches the heart in its more magical moments.
Say, I’m feeling like I really need to go play some JRPGs!
