Movie Review
\nHayao Miyazaki\u2019s
\nHOWL\u2019S CASTLE
\nReviewed by Fran Bigman<\/p>\n
Howl\u2019s Moving Castle Defies Disney Logic<\/p>\n
(Spring 2005 Issue)<\/p>\n <\/span>Call it a spoiler, but I feel safe letting slip in my first sentence that Howl\u2019s Moving Castle has a happy ending\u2014of a sort. This is proof that Hayao Miyazaki\u2014known informally as the greatest animation director in the world today\u2014hasn\u2019t sold out Reviewers of the film have gushed over the inventiveness of Miyazaki\u2019s characters, from the gentle Totoro to the ghostly But even to use the word \u201clogic\u201d is misleading; the movie is deliciously inconsistent in a style only Miyazaki can pull off. This defiance of typical movie logic is sometimes maddening, but it\u2019s refreshingly honest in its denial of the comfort that The beauty of Miyazaki\u2019s movies, then, is the questions he raises, not the comfort he provides. The artist Takashi Spirited Away\u2019s focus on one girl\u2019s quest to rescue her parents from the pigsty made it a better and more enjoyable movie Howl\u2019s Moving Castle is now playing only at Loews Lincoln Square at Broadway and 68th St; if you want to avoid the Movie Review Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s HOWL\u2019S CASTLE Reviewed by Fran Bigman Howl\u2019s Moving Castle Defies Disney Logic (Spring 2005 Issue) Call it a spoiler, but I feel safe letting slip in my first sentence that Howl\u2019s Moving Castle has a happy ending\u2014of a sort. Sophie, our heroine, is a plucky but serious teenage brunette who has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":59,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-416","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t
\nSophie, our heroine, is a plucky but serious teenage brunette who has a romantic run-in with the young wizard Howl. In a
\njealous fit, the Witch of the Waste transforms her into a 90-year-old crone. Setting off in search of a way to break the curse,
\nSophie attaches herself to Howl\u2019s entourage as a cleaning woman and works her way into his life, ultimately managing to
\nfind true love, end the colossal and pointless war that has tempted the wizard into destructive violence, and change back
\ninto her old self. Except for the shock of white hair on her head.<\/p>\n
\nto Disney yet, although the dubbed version of Howl\u2019s Moving Castle does feature some wince-inducing voice-overs by the
\nlikes of Billy Crystal. At first, the movie\u2019s too-perfect ending seems to come straight out of a Disneyfied fairy tale, with all
\nloose ends resolved and the characters set to live happily ever after. But Sophie\u2019s white hair, which lingers as a reminder
\nof the old woman she once was, reminds us that in Miyazaki\u2019s world, things are never that simple.<\/p>\n
\nNo-Face of Spirited Away, his stunning art direction (the way he sends wind rustling through grass has to be seen to be
\nbelieved), and his anti-war, environmental consciousness, almost as explicit here as in previous movies like Nausicaa and
\nPrincess Mononoke. Yet almost all have complained about the plot, calling it mystifying and magical at best and pointlessly
\nmeandering at worst. You could call it dream logic for the way it blends a turn-of-the-century, vaguely European setting with
\nfantastical war machines right out of Jules Verne, the way it has its characters travel through two time periods and four
\ndifferent worlds.<\/p>\n
\nWhat are we to make of a wizard who rules over a moving castle but can\u2019t even change his own hair color? On a larger
\nscale, characters drift in and out of the plot and our heroes forgive every villainous act in the movie so quickly they seem to
\nsuffer from amnesia; as in Spirited Away, you have absolutely no idea what will happen next, and next to no idea how Howl
\nand Sophie\u2014or your fellow movie-goers\u2014are making it through this tangle of seemingly arbitrary events.<\/p>\n
\ncomes from an ending where evil is vanquished, the good guys win, and order is completely restored to the world. Miyazaki
\nhimself has told interviewers that he doesn\u2019t believe in villains, that the idea that you can blame a few people for evil acts is
\nridiculous. In the current political climate, this is an embattled idea.<\/p>\n
\nMurakami, whose current exhibit Little Boy: The Arts of Japan\u2019s Exploding Subculture at the Japan Society connects anime
\nto a streak of immaturity in contemporary Japanese culture, loves Miyazaki all the same. In the exhibition catalog,
\nMurakami calls Howl\u2019s Moving Castle \u201cthe movie Japan needs now.\u201d Howl\u2019s Moving Castle deals, as he notes, with issues
\nlike personal responsibility in a time of war, the need for community, and the joys and terrors of aging at a time when many
\nJapanese are against the war in Iraq but feel powerless to change government policy, when Japan\u2019s traditionally strong
\ncommunities are showing signs of erosion in the forms of juvenile crime and shut-ins who refuse to leave their homes,
\nwhen the aging and shrinking of the Japanese population is a national obsession.<\/p>\n
\nthan Howl\u2019s Moving Castle in many ways \u2013 a more coherent plot, deeper emotional resonance, and a tighter resolution, to
\nname a few. Yet Miyazaki\u2019s ambition in addressing these issues in his wonderfully dreamlike, oblique style\u2014a style
\nresistant to the Manichean worldview of many other movies for both kids and adults\u2014cannot be denied.<\/p>\n
\ndubbed version, I\u2019ve heard rumors that the original will also be shown in a week or so.
\n******************<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"