A Weak Miyazaki Film, But Still A Miyazaki Film

Rating: 6/10 (16 May 2011)

I'm an enormous fan of Hayao Miyazaki. With each and every one of films one can expect lavish animation, an enormous amount of creativity and imagination, and an experience that pulls the viewer into another world. I find in each of his films there is a scene or two that simply puts one's jaw to the floor and leaves this sense of epic satisfaction. All of the above exist in Howl's Moving Castle, as does a certain amount of flaw. This flaw lies in two elements, and unfortunately they're the most important elements in the film, the story and characters.
The story takes place in a fictional world of sorcery and magic. A laboring girl named Sophie falls under and aging curse from an envious witch. She ventures, somewhat unwittingly, to the home of the wizard Howl, which is a large castle capable of moving anywhere in the fabric of existence. In short, the story is overwhelmingly complex and contains a lot of separate factors that conform around the leading characters. As you can guess, Howl's Moving Castle suffers from trying to pack too much into one plot. We have multiple character arcs, not a mention of war going on at once. Now that doesn't sound too difficult, it's been accomplished before. But this is Miyazaki film, and things are extremely deep with a lot of subliminal work that there's just not room for. The story comes off as being very choppy as well as rushed. What's worse is, the spaces between the many chunks of story are very small, and could have been resolved with an extra thirty seconds of dialogue and animation. The story also lacks a time lapse, and the viewers are supposed to buy that all happens within a relatively short amount of time, which is fairly difficult with all things considered. I think this is in part due to the fact that Howl's Moving Castle is not original piece unlike most Miyazaki films. This was actually based off of a novel by Diana Jones. And it displays all the flaws one has come to expect of a book to film conversion. Not to mention Diana Jones is a British author and Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, so there may have been a slight amount cultural disconnect.
The flaws of the story spill into the flaws with the characters. Now the large cast of characters are very well developed, three dimensional, interesting and entertaining; however they're not very consistent. Sophie's actions constantly contradict either something she previously did or said, or anything a reasonable person would do. Howl is said to be a cruel, heartless womanizer who exploits and tortures women, yet we're never shown him doing so. And the above isn't just a rumor amongst the characters; it's a firm fact, and its existence is one of the main plot points. Not to mention there's one scene where he acts like the complete opposite of his character in the rest of the film. All of this boils into a climax, that while drawn and executed perfectly, is mind-boggling and makes no sense whatsoever. Another thing worth mention is: while watching the film (I preferred to watch it in Japanese, which is my recommendation) the subtitles frequently displayed dialogue in which I couldn't hear anyone talking. Either this is the result of a faulty DVD, or really bad sound mixing, likely the latter.
I know it sounds like I'm really bashing the film, but it's just one of those movies where the positives (which there are plenty of) are just hard to put into text. The art direction and the way the story is expressed through the animation are spectacular and the atmosphere it creates is nothing short of magical. The story contains a lot of passion, and its themes of lust, deception and warfare are integrated very well. I found myself very attached to the characters and the scenes are so well crafted, they alone make Howl's Moving Castle worth multiple views.
My favorite animated movies, which I also view as the best, are films that succeed at the surface but really strive beneath it. Films such as Princess Mononoke, The Fox and the Hound, and The Secret of NIMH are examples of films that do this perfectly. Howl's Moving Castle gets better and better the deeper the experience goes. The subliminal messages, the emotion and the attachment are absolutely perfect. But it's at the surface where it fails. I really wanted to love Howl's Moving Castle, but the rough story and two-faced characters kept me from doing so. I did however like it, and it's pretty hard not to.