A Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (4 September 2003)

This film is a masterpiece: visually stunning and full of poetry. Again, Miyazaki shows his ability to rediscover a child's sense of wonder. The plot here, like that of Princess Mononoke, demonstrates his mythopoetic genius: he has taken elements from existing stories and woven them into a compelling, visionary narrative: here we have the world of Dickens married to Swift's floating island Laputa, with dashes of swashbuckling pirate tales. Miyazaki is always fascinated by flight (Kiki, Spirited Away, Porco Rosso, Totoro), but nowhere does he do anything as magical with that theme as here. He has transposed sea-going vessels, and all the imagery associated with it (pirates, ocean liners, great gunships), into the air. This film seems to cancel the real history of flight, and to substitute another, imaginary version. A double anachronism: this is the way the nineteenth century would have imagined flight. It cannot be denied either that the film has a strong emotional dimension: the boy who dreams of flying goes back to the mine and watches as a girl floats down from the sky into his arms! The film is filled with moments of stunning beauty, poetically and visually: Pazu and Sheeta in the gondola over the pirate ship watch the huge gunship emerge below them; the destruction of Laputa - the walls come crumbling down and rain into the sea - Apocalypse; the great tree of Laputa floats away at the end.

The more I reflect on Miyazaki's films, the more I am convinced that he is one of the greatest filmmakers, one of the great artists of our time.