A film to watch when you're young, and watch again when you've grown up

Rating: 10/10 (22 April 2011)

Like many reviewers here, I also recommend to watch it in the original Japanese. Characters are more vivid, and the music is more atmospheric. Unfortunately, Disney was too true to its policy not to allow a moment without music when nobody is talking. Miyazaki's (or a characteristic to any Japanese artwork) mastery of sound and silence, existence and voidness, were thereby systematically destroyed. It's also noticeable that music was grossly modified. Some may like this way, but I believe the original held the beauty of this film more effectively. Simply, my ears remember it as I heard in the original even though it was more than 10 years ago!
The dubbing was done alright. Mark Hamill ('Muska') and Cloris Leachman ('Dola') were excellent. But James van der Beek ('Pazu') was a wrong choice. Pazu is good-natured, but essentially a tough orphan boy who works in a mine. Van der Beek cannot act on such a role, and instead he made Pazu sound like a middle-class boy who would perform well at school. Pazu in the original was a boy who wouldn't look back a second, but Pazu van der Beek was a rich boy who tried to be wild and that was pathetic.
Is there a lesson in this film, besides entertainment? Many say it's about power and greed. Sure, those are important sidelines. But I think the most important message was the critique on our industrial civilisation. Towards the end of the film, Sheeta says "I see now why the Laputians left the castle. You cannot live away from the earth and soil!" I reckon this is the one-line message from Miyazaki. During the opening credit, we see the concise history of the Laputa world: a steam engine -> industrial revolution -> advances to the sky -> flying cities -> arms race -> war -> people leaving from the fallen ships -> back to the simple life on earth. Miyazaki's world view is clear - he's an environmentalist. He also has a social side. In planning this film, Miyazaki travelled to Wales. It was 1980s, when many mining towns were suffering from closure. Miyazaki felt so much compassion to those townspeople, and made those people immortal in this film. Though idealised, we meet them in Pazu's mining valley.