Castle Early

Wide eyes. Effiminate males. Gorgeous, painterly scenes. Plots that don't make sense. Billy Crystal. Howl's Moving Castle is the latest by anime master, Hayao Miyazaki.

In the last few years, Miyazaki's films have done reasonably well in the United States. In particular, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Unlike the more machismo forms of anime (eg., Akira), Miyazaki's films are aimed more at children.

To western eyes, anime follows conventions that seem maddening, in particular, everyone has huge eyes. I'm sure someone has asked, but I'd be curious to find out why that is. Would animators commit seppuku if forced to draw eyes more to relative scale? It's something every Japanese animator seems to do.

Another odd aspect is waif-like males. Howl, who is the lead male, in the titular film, is thin. While I admire Japanese animators for drawing their males with complete disregard for Western sensibilities, I wonder what the motivation is. I'm an Asian-American, but I've lived in the US all my life, so I can't claim cultural recognition.

As with other Miyazaki films, and anime in general, the plot is somewhat hard to figure out. The two main characters are Sophie, a girl who makes hats, who catches Howl's eyes, and then is cursed by the Witch of the Waste to be an elderly woman. The curse prevents the cursed from telling others about the curse. Howl is a wizard, who lives in a castle that crawls, and is more churning machine, than building. This castle also serves as a portal to other parts of the world.

Once cursed, Sophie decides to work as a cleaning lady at Howl's Castle. Sophie seems to be in little hurry to remove the curse (partly because she can't talk about it, partly because the film doesn't seem to care). She even befriends the Witch who put the curse on her.

There is a war that's occurring in the background, and yet, it's not the central focus of the film (not that there's much to begin with). The war is meaningless, and while that's often the commentary made by most war films ("all war films are anti-war"), it's never half as meaningless as it is here.

There's Madam Suliman who apparently is Howl's mentor, yet he's afraid of her. The relationship isn't entirely clear.

If the film's enjoyable, it's because of its pieces, rather than its whole. Turniphead is a hopping scarecrow that helps out, without saying anything. Calcifer is the talking flame that powers the castle, and willingly serves Howl. Markl is the kid who's trying to be a wizard, and lives in the castle with Howl. The Witch of the Waste is Miyazaki's vision of Jabba the Hut as an elderly woman.

Miyazaki creates dread with the imposing castle, and the darkness. He does it much more successfully than, say, Lucas does. His deliberate pacing is in marked constrast with the ADD whirlwind that dictates the norm in a Lucas film.

As a viewer, we have no idea where the film is heading, whether good people are good, whether bad people are bad. We don't know if it's important for Sophie to become young, or whether the war goes on or not. And perhaps it doesn't matter. The spectacle of what we see, plus some rudimentary elements of a romance is perhaps enough to enthrall. A Miyazaki film is not about tight plotting, strong character arcs, clear delineations of good and evil. Instead, it is a world that flows, with people trying to be good, and trying to be better than what they are now.