‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ is a wonderful movie
Another wonderful movie I want to spotlight in this space is the Oscar-nominated animated movie Howl’s Moving Castle, which made its DVD debut yesterday.
In it, a teenage hatmaker named Sophie is transformed into an old woman by a witch. In trying to undo the curse, she seeks out the mysterious wizard Howl, the witch’s nemesis, who lives in the movie’s titular mobile home. A brilliant, wildly imaginative movie by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, Howl’s Moving Castle is two hours of truly breathless imagery; largely about overcoming fears of rejection, loss, and time (which burden its characters and cripple their principles), and how those insecurities manifest themselves even in the foolishness of war. Miyazaki’s screenplay (adapted from a novel by Diana Wynne Jones) is genius in the way it uses cliché and sentiment to propel and sustain the depth and complexity of its story.
The DVD has subtitled and dubbed versions of the movie. I imagine that both are excellent (dubbed will be especially helpful for younger children, for whom the movie might be occasionally intense, but generally OK), though I’ve only seen the subtitled version, and highly recommend it.
