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Saturday, March 18, 2006

Howl's Moving Castle

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Walt Disney recently released the English version of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle. Steve and I watched it last weekend, and it was a good film :-). It was based on a novel by Diana Wynne Jones.

The top 3 things I like about Miyazaki's films are 1. the landscape art, 2. the music, and 3. the attention to human detail. "Not the story?" you ask. I have to be honest--sometimes the stories are just so different that I have a hard time analyzing it :-). I guess that's why other people like his films--because there's a lesson to learn, but the way those lessons are taught is different from the typical western plot structure. I, on the other hand, sometimes end up getting confused if the lesson that I learned was the lesson they wanted to teach :-).

Anyway, the art. When you watch a Miyazaki film, you will always have a landscape view of something: mountains, fields, valleys--and Miyazaki has a way of drawing them that makes you want to BE there. And the music--I have a copy of the Spirited Away soundtrack, and it's probably the soundtrack I listen to the most. One of the pieces still gives me goose bumps when it gets to the crescendo :-).

And the attention to human detail. Not in the art, in the mannerisms. The next time you see a Miyazaki film, think of yourself as an animator. Is it really necessary that when Sophie chooses her next hat to decorate, that she pushes away the top two in the pile so she can get to the third? No, not really. She could just get the one at the top of the stack. Goodness knows that's easier to animate :-). But that's not how people in real life do it. A real person would choose which hat he/she would be in the mood to do next. In his film Spirited Away it's the same thing when Chihiro puts her sneakers on. Animation-wise, is it really necessary that she would tap her toes on the floor when she was done to make sure the shoes fit nice and snug? No, but it sure makes her more human :-).

The lesson I learned from Howl's Moving Castle was taught to me not by the lead characters, but by the supporting characters. The supporting characters were in love with the lead characters, but the lead characters were in love with each other. Follow me so far :-)? I noticed that when the supporting characters realized that the people they were in love with were in love with someone else, there was no catfight; there was no "life is unfair, I'm going to go kill myself" melodrama. Sure, they were disappointed, but you could tell from their reaction that they recognized that sometimes, that's the way life is. That was the biggest thing I took away from the film: when bad things happen, or things don't turn out the way you hope, that you accept that you just can't control everything (and that throwing a tantrum won't really help :-)). Sometimes that's just the way life is. Accept it and move on.

I don't know if that was the lesson I was supposed to learn, but I thought it was a good thing to be reminded of :-). It'll be interesting to see what other people took away from the film :-).

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