Howl's Moving Castle

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE is a great spectacle, like all of director Hayao Miyazaki's films. It begins with a wondrous, tortoise-esque, steampunk castle moving across alpine landscapes. This sets the future of the film up, as we return to a young girl named Sophie (Emily Mortimer) who makes hats and gets herself into trouble. On one occasion, Sophie encounters Howl, an enigmatic wizard of sorts who saves her from ghastly blob creatures. A wicked witch takes this to mean that Sophie has some importance, and thus turns her into an old woman as a punishment. Sophie, devastated, seeks out Howl, for he might have the power to change her back to her original form. HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE, and how it goes about its specific journey, is a depressingly disappointing film though: intermeshing nonsensical logic with supposedly grand subplots that do little but exist for the spectacle. Miyazaki's heroine's are usually young: practically children. Here, his heroine starts off as a child, but is turned into an old woman. Miyazaki, at an old age, is attempting to create a unity between young and old, but his heroine is at heart, still young, and her oldness is only a mask of wrinkles. If this is Miyazaki's attempt to say that the old still have the hearts of the young, then his statement is awkward. His heroine is undeserving of her oldness, its false. In translation to storytelling, the now-old heroine seems tired and has none of the liveliness of Miyazaki's other characters. His statement is awkward because it is only part-true. Like the contrivance of the young turned old, Miyazaki utilizes a falsehood for support. His other films show this unity better, especially SPIRITED AWAY, where the elderly witch is one of the most animated characters. But in HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE, with a premise that is awkward, the story becomes mired in a silliness. But it's only when so many aspects of a film work that it can become ultimately disappointing due to a major fault. There are wonderful aspects of the film, including the steampunk castle, a feisty fire demon, and an odd scarecrow, but we should wonders should be a given in any Miyazaki film, and for the director to fail on other fronts makes for an anticlimactic ending, and dissatisfaction.
Howl's Moving Castle: ★★