Studio Ghibli has a well-earned reputation for animation that is both beautiful to look at and also tends to tell good stories, very different from traditional Western style animation. Co-founder Hayao Miyazaki is both an ardent pacifist and a lover of nature, and his films tend to reflect those interests. Take Howl’s Moving Castle, a movie that, while set in a war, never shows the war as anything other than a tragic waste of innocent lives, none of whom asked for the war in the first place.
Besides, the English dub featured Lauren Bacall and Billy Crystal. This is the sort of movie you pull out when you really need to win a game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Sophie (Emily Mortimer) is a young girl working in her mother’s hat shop. She’s a serious woman with little interest in the spectacle going on around her as her country, looking like some sort of steampunk sort of place, is getting ready to go off to war over the disappearance of the king’s son. However, the famed wizard Howl (Christian Bale) is in the area, his moving castle having been seen walking through the hills on what looks like mechanical chicken legs. A chance encounter with Howl gets Sophie an unasked-for visit from the Witch of the Waste (Bacall), a somewhat shapeless blob of a woman who casts a spell on Sophie, aging her into an elderly version of herself (Jean Simmons). Sophie’s only real hope is to find someone to reverse the spell, and Howl might be able to do it. Of course, part of the spell prevents Sophie from actually telling anyone about it, but she soon finds the moving castle with the help of a living scarecrow named Turnip Head. Or not. He can’t talk.
Fortunately, Sophie manages to find an ally of sorts in the fire demon Calcifer (Crystal), a small flame that animates the castle and lives in the hearth. Howl’s young apprentice Markl (Josh Hutcherson) likewise takes a liking to Sophie, and since Howl seems impressed that Sophie manages to get Calicifer to allow her to use him as a cooking fire, he opts to let her stay as well. However, the king is calling on all witches and wizards to report to him to help with the war effort. Howl doesn’t think much of the war and ignores the summons for as long as he can. But as Sophie falls for the wizard, can she win him over and maybe even break the curse?
That seems like a basic enough story, but this is a Studio Ghibli movie, so it won’t be that simple a plot. Sure, the Witch of the Waste comes across as hostile to Sophie, but she ultimately isn’t so much evil as a bit incompetent and impulsive with a tendency towards jealousy. Arguably, the real villain here is the war itself. Howl can ignore the king and the royal magician Suliman (Blythe Danner) for as long as he can, but when the bombs start falling from odd aircraft with flapping wings, he’ll head out in a bird form that he may get stuck in if he uses too much of it. And for all that Howl supposedly has no heart, he sure does seem to care deeply about the people in his life, even as his menagerie grows to include all of the above characters and a wheezy dog.
Basically, this was a lot of fun. If anything, some of the celebrity voices for the English dub were a little distracting. Oh, most were fine and even a bit anonymous. But Billy Crystal sounds like, well, Billy Crystal, and I didn’t quite understand why Sophie gained or lost a British accent depending on her body’s physical age. But that’s my only real complaint about the movie, and it probably comes from the American distributors. For the rest, it’s a great film with a message that war is bad, and that’s generally something I would welcome anyway.
Grade: A-
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