If east be English

Rating: 9/10 (7 April 2010)

The way I discovered Miyazaki's movies was with a bit of surprise and curiosity, something that itself is best depicted in his movies. It was "Howl's Castle" that caught my attention while switching channels one Sunday. You can almost always see a sublime English influence in his work- characters with an innocent curiosity exploring a world of immense power and intractable magic. It is intriguing and immersing - a world that I hadn't seen since having read "Alice in the Wonderland" in my childhood for the first time. Music and art-direction is crafted very carefully to give an effect rarely achieved by cinema.
Castle-in-the-sky is probably one of the best of his works. We revisit Swift's "Laputa" from the Gulliver's Travels in the movie – a place far into the unknown that has had a history of the sort of power and intelligence that is unmatched by the modern civilization. The characters of the movie Sheeta and Pazu both find themselves onto an inevitable voyage to Laputa. Their rather exploratory journey to Laputa is full of hurdles and discoveries. As they run into air-pirates, plane-crashes and magical revelations we become a part of their joy, worries, inquisitiveness and amazement.
If you're thinking Harry Potter, then you're absolutely mistaken. This might just be the opposite end of the spectrum. The visual effects of the movie are not meant to transcend the limits of the real world by letting you be in a fantasy world of magic and wizardry but instead in a rather unique way to meditate on our being and might in this world, in a way the Gulliver's travel did. That all of it can be achieved through animation is something only Miyazaki can be credited to.
One thing that Miyazaki does very well is to not let somewhat sentimental moments in the movie become too sappy or theatrical. The story might have had a tendency to become that way but script kept it entertaining with jokes and "quirkiness" of its characters at times. The dubbing artists did a wonderful job in making this movie appear seamlessly "English". It would remain rather incomprehensible to me how movies from Far East can be enjoyed without any conscious attempt to overcome cultural boundaries.