Howl's Moving Castle

[alexxkay]

kestrell and I went out to see this last night. We had been avidly looking forward to it, as we both quite liked the book it's based on. What we got was both more and less than what we expected.

Great, huge chunks of the movie are astonishly faithful to the book. And great, huge chunks of the movie are completely invented, Miyzazaki trying to fit his favorite themes into a story that is totally not about them. It's been a while since I read the book, so I can't say definitively that there was *no* warfare referred to in it -- but it certainly wasn't a huge central theme, with airships and bombs falling out of the sky, and (apparently) martial law everywhere. Nor does the wizard Howl become any sort of monster, at least not in any *physical* sense. Also, not a lot of flying and/or steam-powered machines in the book.

Miyazaki apparently wanted to tell his standard "War Is Bad" story, whereas the book's story is more about growing into emotional maturity. Howl's 'evil' in the book is all about being callous towards pretty young women and avoiding committment. As the Sophie of the book says, "He's a slitherer-outer."

Although they didn't have Howl actually yelling "Despair!!! (which has become a watchword between me and Kes), they *did* include the surrounding scene, and quite faithfully (it's the green slime scene). But, like many other parts of the film, without being linked to the original *story*, it didn't make a lot of sense.

For most of the last half of the film, I was constantly going "Huh? - I don't get what's supposed to be happening here?". Now, to be fair, the book's original story was complex and confusing at times, with a fairly deus ex machina ending. But the movie, with the half-Jones/half-Miyazaki story was even worse. On the other hand, anime audiences don't necessarily expect their movies to make sense, so perhaps this wasn't such a big problem for most people.

Mild thumbs up. Even if the story falls down, it is all very pretty, and the bit with the dog is very amusing.