Howl's Moving Reflections

Every-so-often, I go on a Studio Ghibli binge. Recently, it’s to prepare for The Boy and the Heron. It’s been fun watching these movies again, but as with every binge, it’s inevitable that I’ll get to Howl’s Moving Castle. While I’ve always enjoyed the movie, I have…mixed feelings too. So much so that I wrote an analysis in 2015 for Infinite Rainy Day. Since it’s been almost 8 years, I figured I’d revisit what I had to say.

I won’t dissect everything I wrote. The piece is already really long, and that’d be unnecessary. Instead, I’m selecting a handful of thoughts to see if they hold up. Reminder that I was writing for a different audience, and that I’ve matured quite a bit since then. If anything sounds weird or dated, that’s why. Don’t hold it against me either.

Oh, and this was one of my earliest “Does it hold up?” pieces.

“Perhaps Howl’s Moving Castle’s greatest strengths can be summed up in two words: ‘aesthetics’ and ‘characters’…”

As is expected, I started out with the positives. Not only to be “fair”, but also to be balanced. I did that for all of these pieces on Infinite Rainy Day, as well as for The Matrix, WALL-E and Batman Begins on here. It’s the most-consistent aspect of this series, save me using headings. But I digress.

Reading this sentence, however, strikes me as pretentious retroactively. Not because it’s badly-written, but because it reads like I’m grading it. The reason why I abandoned “Does it hold up?” is because discussing works of art, which movies are, this way is unfair; after all, movies age, and your perceptions of them also change. Howl’s Moving Castle’s a flawed film, but judging it in an academic manner makes me cringe now. Especially when many film enthusiasts think they know everything about movies because they have degrees.

The movie definitely looks gorgeous. That I can’t deny.

“I love the soundtrack. It’s Joe Hisaishi, meaning that you’d expect top-notch work anyway, but he doesn’t disappoint with his scorings here…”

Firstly, 25 year-old me, “soundtrack” and “score” aren’t synonymous. Soundtracks are songs with lyrics, while scores are melodic arrangements. Schindler’s List, my favourite biopic, has a score, but it also has songs that’d qualify as a soundtrack. The most famous is “Oyfn Pripetchik” that’s sung as Schindler watches the girl in the red coat stroll through the ghetto, though there are others. Even with Joe Hisaishi, Merry-Go-Round of Life, Howl’s Moving Castle’s running motif, is a score, while “Promise of the World” is an original song. It’s confusing, as both fall under the blanket term “OST”, but there’s a difference.

Speaking of, if I were to re-write this, I’d probably include something about how Joe Hisaishi’s the Japanese John Williams, and that he partners with Hayao Miyazaki like Williams does with Steven Spielberg. That doesn’t come across in the original piece, which makes sense because I was writing it for a different crowd. Regardless, Hisaishi’s a master of his craft, and Merry-Go-Round of Life is arguably my favourite piece from him. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other tracks in the movie, contrary to what I claimed, but I maintain that I’d dance with my wife to it at our wedding. (Assuming I get married, that is!) It’s that good.

“By the way, kudos on the dub! Howl’s Moving Castle has, arguably, Disney’s best Studio Ghibli dub, although why Christian Bale went for an American accent instead of his native Welsh is really bizarre.”

You’ll notice I skipped the character section. That’s because the characters were never an issue for me, though Howl has inconsistent writing in the middle of the movie. However, the dub…I’m not sure I’d call it Disney’s best anymore. It’s excellent, but the accents throw me off. Ignoring Christian Bale’s attempt at an American accent, which is noticeable when he’s not trying out his Batman growl, I’m not why only Sophie and her sister Lettie are British. Remember, Jean Simmons was from Hollywood’s Golden Age! Couldn’t she have thrown her accent to fit with everyone else? Same goes for Emily Mortimer, who’s used other accents before!

It wouldn’t bother me if Sophie and Lettie weren’t the only ones with accents, but they are. Even their mother, voiced by Marie Devon, sounds American! As does Howl…kind of. Perhaps Disney forgot to make the accents consistent? Why not give everyone a British accent? Or perhaps that’s too difficult? I could ruminate all day about how Sophie and Lettie’s accents stick out more than Howl’s, but it’s too late to fix that…

“…I’ll admit that Miyazaki’s not known for his excellent scripting, since he tends to let his storyboards do the talking for themselves, but even his most bizarre films have an overlapping focus. This movie? Not really.”

And here’s where I share most of my issues with the movie. Two points: one, Hayao Miyazaki generally skips the screenwriting process when making movies, instead letting the storyboards do the heavy lifting. There are several reasons why he does this, but the main one’s that he doesn’t feel like screenplays mesh with his style. It’s highly-unconventional, but Miyazaki prefers that his movies evolve naturally. Speaking as someone who likes to wing his writing, I can relate.

Two, Howl’s Moving Castle isn’t nearly as bizarre as some claim. Sure, it’s weird, but as far as flat-out bizarre goes, Spirited Away takes the cake. Which makes sense, since it’s grounded in childlike logic. The levels of nightmare fuel and acid-trip moments present in Howl’s Moving Castle pale in comparison, even if there’s less internal logic. But that’s not what bothers me.

What bothers me is how aimless many of the plot threads are. Miyazaki’s storyboarding-first method leaves plenty of internal logic to be desired, but he usually makes it work. Howl’s Moving Castle, however, remains the outlier, as its loose storytelling is its greatest pitfall. I get that this was deliberate, as this is Miyazaki’s commentary on The US’s invasion of Iraq, but that nothing coalesces is a problem. It’s not like Miyazaki hasn’t tackled war before and made it coherent!

“…In my retrospective on ScrewAttack, I mentioned that the problem with summarizing this movie is that you’re left with too many questions…”

I still agree with this, even though my content on ScrewAttack no longer exists. However, I’ve warmed to some of the questions that I had in 2015. The biggest one, “Why was Sophie cursed?”, boils down to, in my mind, The Witch of the Waste revealing how Sophie felt internally. Sophie lacks self-confidence. She doesn’t view herself as attractive, hence the curse brings out her…I won’t say “ugliness”, but rather her internal views. And the movie shows this metaphor with her de-aging whenever she gains confidence, and aging-up whenever her confidence diminishes.

Unfortunately, it’s inconsistent. It might also be too subtle, so most people wouldn’t catch it anyway. Miyazaki revels in subtle gimmicks, but it doesn’t always work. With this movie, the inconsistency of the curse definitely does that subtlety no favours when Sophie stops caring halfway through. After all, if the movie doesn’t care, why should you?

“…The movie rams down your throat that ‘WAR IS BAD, WAR IS SUFFERING, END THIS WAR NOW!’ so often that it stops being subtext and becomes actual text when the characters start talking about it. And it’s infuriating…”

Perhaps the only “non-subtle” aspect of this movie is its anti-war messaging. Like I said, Hayao Miyazaki was mad about the invasion of Iraq, and it shows. But while the destruction and chaos are effective pieces of storytelling, the aimlessness…isn’t. The movie clearly has a point about war, but it’s told so sloppily that it’s frustrating. Even after having seen the movie many times, I still don’t get many of the details:

Who started the war?

Was diplomacy tried first?

At any point during the war, did someone on either side try mediation?

What was Madame Suliman’s ultimate goal, other than using her students as pawns?

Why did Howl care as strongly as he did?

Why did Howl keep intervening, especially if it caused him pain?

And why did Madame Suliman end the war so abruptly?

Some of these questions are self-explanatory. Remember, The US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years was also abrupt! But while these shouldn’t be deal-breakers, and they aren’t, the ability to easily poke holes in a narrative like this is a problem. Hayao Miyazaki likes unanswered questions, and cryptic logic, but he’s never been a half-baked storyteller…until here. He has many thoughts on war, some justified, but Howl’s Moving Castle feels like a juvenile attempt at discussing them. It doesn’t feel sincere.

“…[W]hile Miyazaki’s known for taking his time, here the detours pad out a movie that’s already overly-long, has too much jammed into it and still feels like it needs to be longer, for some reason.”

In my review for ScrewAttack, I mentioned that this is a nearly 2-hour experience with 90-minutes of content that feels like it should be over 3-hours. I don’t think that anymore, not after sitting through The Wind Rises. (And I like that movie!) But while that’s the case now, it doesn’t mean Howl’s Moving Castle doesn’t lack focus. Because it does. Perhaps with some refining of its themes and fixing its loose threads, this could’ve been masterpiece. As it stands, it's merely a good time.

I’d mention some of the other points I included, like how being “bizarre” is a terrible justification for bad writing, but that’s subjective. It also feels like shameless whining on my part. However, there’s one word I left out that was present in my ScrewAttack piece, and I’m unsure why I neglected it: gonzo. Howl’s Moving Castle is a gonzo story, as it jumps everywhere and lacks focus. It’s not a word I use often, but it’s true. Make of that what you will.

Ultimately, my Infinite Rainy Day piece is an interesting time capsule. It’s long-winded, overly-ranty and incredibly-cynical, but it encapsulates many of my thoughts and feelings about the movie even now. I don’t think I’d be as harsh if I were to rewrite it, but I also wouldn’t discount the original post altogether. That wouldn’t be honest or fair.

Then again, at least it’s not Tales From Earthsea…