Howl’s Moving Castle

Title: Howl’s Moving Castle
Rating: 3/5
Genre: Animation, Adventure
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Language: Japanese

Following on from the masterpiece of ‘Spirited Away’ comes another endeavour from the director often described as the Godfather of animation. Unfortunately, despite his knack for working in this genre the result comes off a shadow of his previous works, failing to live up to his reputation in multiple aspects from the poorly explained plot to the comparatively simplistic sets used. The manner in which his own opinions are expressed through the piece once again make an appearance, but what made ‘Spirited Away’ so strong was their subtle usage, painfully absent for a number of scenes. Despite this, the result is still better than many other ‘family’ films I’ve been bored enough to watch and despite this disappointing work in his otherwise impressive history remains worthwhile for fans of Miyazaki.

Sofi is a teenage girl, working at a hat shop with her mother, and it is walking around the streets of the steampunk inspired (think Victorian-era earth with magic) world that she happens on a mysterious wizard who acts as an escort on her way home. In steps the Witch of the Waste who puts a curse on her, jealous of her interaction with the wizard, transforming her into a wizened old lady. Embarking to lift her curse, she takes refuge with Howl in his moving castle with his friendly fire demon Karushifa and young apprentice Marukuru as she is swept into a world at war, where the king’s sorceress – Howl’s master – is maliciously removing the magic from the land, where Howl is wanted and struggles to hide from her clutches.

Dealing with the positives first, many of the characters are very realistically portrayed, once again denying the notion of ‘good’ and ‘evil;’ the witch is jealous and does show humanistic traits, Howl himself is vain and childish despite his magical prowess and Sofi has to dealing with her sudden transformation in age. The fire demon deserves special commendation for the manner it is worked, when the fire is dying he will scream and shout for wood, and when he receives it happily munches on it and wraps his fiery arms around it. Even the scarecrow who hops along incapable of speech has an odd character to him, once again proving that the director is capable of bringing characters to life.

The main issue here is that of the plot; it becomes incredibly muddled and rather poorly explained. A single line at the start of the film explains why they are hunting Howl and is all too easily missed, the two sides of the war are at no point referred to as more than ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and the manner in which she removes the curse seems randomly placed with no explanation. Whilst against being spoon fed it felt like more time could be spent devoted to leaving some form of hints. For example the manner that Sofi changes age throughout the film is left entirely to interpretation and the only rationale that I can come up with is that it is a reflection on how she is perceived; a visualisation of the ‘you’re as old as you feel’ sentiment, but this is just one more aspect I expect we shall never truly know.

As with his other works there is a hidden message behind many of the scenes, but they are often dealt in a blatant manner; the futility of the war constantly mentioned in a manner that will have all but the youngest of viewers groaning; the constant downtrodden pessimistic outlook of Sofi complaining of how ugly she believes herself to be often getting tiring. There is a subtlety sorely lacking from many of the scenes seemingly placed for the sole purpose of injecting his views into the unfolding plot. The backdrops and soundtrack were still relatively impressive, if again lacking compared to his other works, but only serves to add the final nail of disappointment to the coffin. Still not a bad piece, but he can do better.