Film
Howl's Moving Castle reviewed by Rhiannon Lassiter
It's rare that a fan gets to see one of their favourite books made into a film by their favourite studio. I've been a Diana Wynne Jones fan since I started reading fantasy and a Studio Ghibli fan since I started watching anime. How perfect is it that my favourite anime studio should make the film of Howl's Moving Castle?
Well, as it turns out, highly imperfect. I knew it was dangerous to get my hopes so high and I warned myself that films don't have perfect fidelity to the original text. I'd seen a trailer and knew that the characters, although beautifully drawn, would not be my vision. I thought I was prepared and I set off to watch the film expecting it to be a blending of Wynne Jones and Studio Ghibli. It wasn't. It's not a blend, it's two different stories stuck together.
The first half is actually very close to the book. There are a few understandable cuts. Sophie has only one sister, and the whole Lettie/Martha swapover plot is erased. But the witch of the waste turns up on cue to cast her spell and Sophie sets off from a beautifully drawn Market Chipping, meets a scarecrow along the way and fetches up at the Moving Castle. This is a walking, mechanical affair, nothing like a castle. But it works. It expresses the personality of Califer the fire demon, who is utterly delightful. Michael and Howl are well characterised. Howl is charming, debonair and sly. Michael is nervous, kind and serious. There are some lovely subtle changes to the spell that holds Sophie in the form of an old woman. When she's miserable she's a hunched old crone, when she's feeling happy she's rather more spry.
Howl's 'real world' background is excised from this adaptation and that makes sense. It works in text but it's another ball to keep in th air in film and can be done without, especially since in this version there's more references to the catching of a falling star that was the begining of Howl's downfall. I miss the John Donne poem. It's replaced by a much vaguer bit of rhyme that does nothing for me. But again I can see why.
As the film gets into its stride we have the relevelation that the castle door opens into multiple locations and this is beautifully handled. Kingsbury, Porthaven, Market Chipping and the hillside the castle walks along are all drawn with the rich lush detail that is typically Ghibli. Howl's summoning of green slime because his hair is the wrong colour is delightful.
But here the film takes a surprising turn. Sophie goes to plead on Howl's behalf to the King, asking for the wizard to be released from helping with the war. As in the book she meets the witch of the waste. But while the witch remains a major antagonist until the end of the book, here she is nullified by the King's magician: Madam Suliman. This new character appears to be a combination of Ben Suliman and Mrs Persimmon (both the witch's victims in the book). Madam Suliman strips away the witch of the waste's magic in an instant and for the rest of the film the witch is one of Howl's dependents. The focus of the story shifts to the war, and Howl's attempt to avoid working for the powerful Suliman.
This is... odd. As war planes drop bombs on the Kingdom of Ingary, Howl takes to the sky in the form of a monstrous black bird, a shape he finds it harder and harder to discard as he is tainted by the evil effects of war. Sophie, Michael, the witch of the waste, a dog and the scarecrow continue to live as Howl's dependents and Sophie realises that she is falling in love with Howl. This isn't a million miles away from the book but the while tangled web of magic and personalities that gives the text much of its charm is simplified to the point of meaninglessness. In the book the dog(man) and the scarecrow are both patchwork creations, part of the witch's attempts to create the perfect man. In the film they are just there. Miyazaki seems to have thrown out the entire second half of the plot in favour of what is, to be honest, a much less interesting narrative about how war is bad.
I can't speak for more than the audience in the cinema in Oxford, but it was increasingly clear that the audience were getting restless. At least twenty five were friends of mine (a coincidence but a positive one) and whispers went up and down the rows of seats as those of us who knew the book were asked if this was going to make any sense in the end. We shrugged and kept watching but the magic was gone and we knew it.
Howl becomes trapped in the bird shape, the castle begins to colapse, the witch tries to steal the fire demon, Sophie and Michael fall into a gorge with broken pieces of castle raining all around them. Miyazaki does manage to make enough of a spectacle of this that the audience quietened down for Sophie's final victory, saving Howl from the dark.
But then, oh dear, this just doesn't make any sense at all. The scarecrow transforms into a human man, announces that he's a prince from a neighbouring kingdom and asks Sophie to marry him. She refuses. This little incident takes place in four lines of dialogue and it's terrible. The entire audience burst out laughing. Suspension of disbelief can only take you so far. They were still laughing thirty seconds later as the credits started to roll. Never have I seen a more confused, bemused and generally disappointed audience leaving a cinema. Friends were grabbing me left right and centre demanding to know what was going on in various sections of the plot left unexplained. "Read the book," I told them. "I swear it makes sense."
The anime is beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. The book is wonderful. But if you want to read Howl's Moving Castle read the book and if you want to watch a Studio Ghibli film watch Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke. Sadly, this film doesn't work as an adaptation and it doesn't work as a film either. It's tragically, fatally flawed. And it grieves me to have to admit it.