Hayao Miyazaki’s anime feature about a magical adventure, a steampunk castle on chicken legs and the devastation wrought by war. Based on the novel by British writer Diana Wynne Jones, the film was nominated for an Oscar in 2006.
Sophie is a young girl who spends most of her time in seclusion working in a hat shop, but one day the curse of the Witch of the Waste transforms her into an old woman. She has to leave home to try and break the evil spell. She meets the Moving Castle, its master—the wizard Howl—and the cute fire demon Calcifer, who lives in the hearth. Sophie is hired as a cleaner and makes a deal with Calcifer: if she can break the magical contract that binds him to the wizard, her curse will be lifted.
The rooms inside the Moving Castle, Sophie’s workshop, and the entire magical world that Miyazaki created with the artists of Studio Ghibli are incredibly detailed. Needles, feathers, ribbons, and hats rhyme with the plants, books, stones, and mysterious artifacts in Howl’s bedroom, as they do with the bits of cheese, candle stubs, heavy books, and alchemical flasks of the sorcerer’s apprentice Markl. The aesthetic of the movie—excessive, chaotic, filled with detail—is similar to the Castle itself, which is an object as well as a living creature, a place, and an independent character.
The film will be screened in Japanese with Russian subtitles.
Howl’s Moving Castle
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Japan, 2004. 119 min. 6+
