War in the Worlds

Rating: 6/10 (21 August 2005)

Miyazaki creates several worlds in an anti-war tale set in a 19th century small England town in the grip of war. Sophie gets a spell on her by the Witch of the Waste and enters as an old lady Howl's moving castle hoping to make it undone. What follows is an incredible imaginative story where real and fantasy elements mix to create a movie universe where literally anything can happen.
The castle / house has one door that can lead to any of four worlds. One is the ordinary world, where Sophie comes from, to make clear that ordinary people suffer from war as they lead their lives. The second leads to a capital city (London?), where power is exercised and war decisions are made by a king. The king is also under a kind of 'spell' as his power is almost taken over by the witch Madam Sulliman, deciding on war and peace (her loyal dog follows Sophie by the way). The way up to the top is long and steep, as there is also a large distance between ordinary citizens and the king, between not having power and having power.
The third world is the world of magic and fantasy, only entered by Howl through the black state. As there is also war in this world, i.e. between good and bad, this is a mirror of the war in the real world. The last world is of peace and quiet, but only shows landscapes and almost no people in it, it can both stand for a post-apocalyptic world or for heaven. All these worlds and their boundaries are not strictly defined; a certain world often assimilates into any of the other worlds.
As Howl starts winning the peace, Sophie grows younger again, the whole aging process an indication of the suffering of people under war. But Howl pays an increasing high price for his war involvement, as he starts having black feathers. Besides space shifting in the story, time shifting is also used; Howl is at the end under a spell after his battles and only saved much later by Sophie. Calcifer is Howl's heart and soul, therefore almost dead due to his war actions in the fantasy world; even his masterpiece the castle is falling apart as a result of that. The Witch of the Waste meanwhile, is turned into a friendly grandma, indicating she was used by the powers in the fantasy world like a politician or a soldier would be in the real world.
The animation is traditional, as always from Ghibli. Most viewers think computer animation is not used at all here, but there is some limited use. The pacing is somewhat slow, its war story is interesting but not that compelling, so we have to rely on Miyazaki's almost unlimited imagination to keep us involved.
One advice: if you can see this in its original (Japanese) version.