l's Moving Castle is a masterpiece from Oscar winning director Hayao Miyazaki. It follows the story of young Sophie Hatter, a girl destined to lead a dull life as a hat maker. Sophie resigns herself to her fate, but fate has other plans for her...
Studio Ghibli have a long tradition in producing great pieces of work, most notably Spirited Away - one which has had much critical acclaim all over the world. The Hayao Miyazaki directed filmv(which he also wrote the screenplay for), Howl's Moving Castle, is another that is deserving of acclaim with it's fantastic story, animation and soundtrack.
This is a tale of Sophie Hatter as she stumbles into a life that she was not really expecting. It starts with her working in her fathers hat shop, but after an encounter with the Witch of the Waste she is cursed and becomes a 90 year old woman when she awakes the following morning. She then flees her home and starts wandering the wastes where she finds and befriends Turnip-head (a scarecrow) who subsequently leads her to the "castle". Howl's moving castle is a large structure on legs that wanders around the wastes, occassionally stopping. Sophie enters the castle and meets Calcifer (voiced by Billy Crystal), a fire demon who is bound to the life of Howl and has the responsibility of moving and protecting the castle.
The names, and the story were adapted from a book by Welsh novelist, Diana Wynne Jones. There are tell-tale signs of this with names like "Sophie Hatter" (and her profession is a hatter), and to have the surname of your profession is something that was common amongst the British during the times of the Anglo-Saxons (where surnames were taken from places, professions, and father's names). Another curious name is that of Calcifer - he claims to be a fire demon, but is in fact a fallen star. Comparing the name Calcifer to Lucifer we can see where the author got inspiration for the name of the character from.
For the majority of the story we see Sophie as an old woman, cursed by the Witch of the Waste for telling her to leave her hat shop, but every now and then we see her as the young woman she really is - unfortunately this wasn't really explained but it didn't really ruin the story or the film in not explaining it. Again there are a number of morales to the story. The most obvious one is the "don't judge a book by it's cover" as Sophie believes she is not pretty, but when she is old she eventually doesn't care about this any more, and the overly vain Howl also realises his past mistakes. Sophie is also very forgiving - she forgives the Witch of the Waste for transforming her after the Witch is changed to be the age she truely is.
I think the only thing really stopping me from giving this film a full 5 stars are the few unexplained story points. One thing that would be nice though is if Studio Ghibli adapted the other two books in the series.
