Howl's Moving Castle (film)

• 1. Introduction

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  Howl's Moving Castle arrived in Japanese cinemas on the 20th of November 2004, carrying more emotional weight than most animated films dare to attempt. Director Hayao Miyazaki had just accepted an Oscar for Spirited Away when the United States launched its invasion of Iraq in 2003. He later said he "had a great deal of rage" about that war and felt hesitation even as he accepted the award. Rather than stay quiet, he channeled that fury into a fantasy about a young hat-maker cursed into old age, a vain wizard who turns himself into a monster to stop a pointless conflict, and a castle that walks on mechanical chicken legs across a war-torn landscape. The questions this film plants are not simple ones: What happens to a person when a war demands they become something they are not? Can compassion be more powerful than magic? And what does it mean to grow old in a world that barely notices you?

• 2. A Director at His Angriest

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  Miyazaki identifies as a pacifist, and the 2003 Iraq War struck him at precisely the moment his international profile was highest. On the eve of that conflict, he made a decision that was, by his own admission, almost a provocation: he chose to make a film he felt would be poorly received in the United States. The brutality and futility of warfare are shown graphically in the finished film. Entire cities are set ablaze. The titular castle is made to fall apart. Animation scholar Susan J. Napier describes Howl as existing under a "spiritual form of curse," his horror and fury escalating as he witnesses the fighting around him. Film critics Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc observe that the film shows people being exploited and turned into something they are not, often in service of a political agenda. Napier also draws a parallel to San, the wild girl at the heart of Princess Mononoke; both she and Howl are isolated from humanity by circumstance, and both eventually go to war to protect what they love. Yet literary scholar Matt Kimmich noted that the film's pacifist statement is blunter than in Princess Mononoke. A scene showing Sophie standing in a field of flowers is interrupted by a war machine, which one commentator described as "a finger accusing empire as the destroyer of peace." Andrew Osmond observed that Howl's anti-war stance is "presented as nihilism with no alternative," as the wizard fights forces from both sides and becomes, in his bird form, the most feared terror in the skies.

• 3. Growing Old, Gaining Freedom

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  Sophie begins the film as a shy young milliner, the eldest of three sisters, who believes she has no future worth speaking of. When the Witch of the Waste turns her into a 90-year-old woman, something unexpected happens: she becomes bolder. Miyazaki said that an attractive aspect of Diana Wynne Jones' source novel was the relatively positive light it shed on growing old, noting that old women are only infrequently allowed to dominate a film's screen time the way Sophie does. Elizabeth Parsons observed that the film disrupts the stereotype of "aged unattractiveness" when the artificially aged Sophie rescues two attractive men who come to love her, and unintentionally ends the war in her country. The actions Sophie performs are those typically associated with grandmothers: nurturing those around her, managing the household, offering care without condition. The film frames these as genuinely heroic. When Madame Suliman strips the Witch of the Waste of all her power and reverts her to her true decrepit form, Sophie takes the old woman in and cares for her, even though that same witch is responsible for Sophie's curse. Napier calls this quality of the film "a kind of valentine" to Miyazaki's older female colleagues at Studio Ghibli. Parsons argues that Miyazaki's portrayal refuses to let old women be simply categorized: they can be powerful and weak, nurturing and selfish, loved and maligned, all at once.

• 4. The Castle Itself

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  In September 2001, Studio Ghibli announced it was developing two films simultaneously. One would become The Cat Returns; the other was an adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' 1986 novel. Producer Toshio Suzuki said Miyazaki was first captivated by the image of a castle moving through the countryside, and was immediately drawn to a puzzle the novel left unsolved: how, exactly, did the castle move? That question led Miyazaki to the now-iconic image of a castle balanced on mechanized bird legs. To build out the film's visual world, Miyazaki traveled to Colmar and Riquewihr in Alsace, France, to study the architecture firsthand. Further inspiration came from the futuristic technology depicted in the work of Albert Robida, a 19th-century French illustrator. Commentators have also noted that Miyazaki's visual style was shaped by his fondness for the "illusion art" of 19th-century Europe. The production process itself was a hybrid: backgrounds were drawn by hand and painted before being digitized, and the characters were also drawn by hand before scanning into the computer. The 1,400 storyboard cuts were completed on the 16th of January 2004, with in-between animation finished on the 25th of June and checking completed the following day. The film was co-produced with Tokuma Shoten, the Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Mitsubishi, and Toho. Mamoru Hosoda of Toei Animation had originally been selected to direct but quit after Studio Ghibli's executives rejected many of his concept ideas. The project was shelved until Miyazaki stepped in, with production resuming in February 2003.

• 5. Novel vs. Film

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  Jones discussed the film with Studio Ghibli representatives but had no input in the production itself. When Miyazaki traveled to England in the summer of 2004 to give her a private viewing of the finished film, she responded: "It's fantastic. No, I have no input. I write books, not films. Yes, it will be from the book. In fact it's likely to be very different, but that's as it should be." The differences are substantial. Jones' novel features a large cast and several interlocking plot threads too complex for a single film; characters including Sophie's second sister Martha were cut entirely. In the novel, the war is only a background detail: the king summons Howl to find his missing brother Justin because Justin's military skills are needed for a forthcoming conflict. Howl's frequent absences in the novel stem from his womanizing habits. Miyazaki replaced this with something much darker: Howl transforms into a giant bird to physically disrupt the battle plans of both armies, at the cost of his own humanity. The Witch of the Waste is the chief antagonist of the novel; in the film, Madame Suliman reduces her to a harmless old woman who ultimately earns the audience's sympathy. The novel's Suliman was split from another character, Mrs. Penstemmon; the film merges them into one. Reviewer Antonia Levi described watching the film as similar to reading high-quality fan fiction: the characters and setting are the same, but the story is different. Levi put it plainly: Jones used Sophie, Howl, and Calcifer to challenge class and gender expectations, while Miyazaki used the same characters to tell a story about personal loyalty, love, and war.

• 6. Joe Hisaishi's Score

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  Joe Hisaishi composed and conducted the score, which was performed by the New Japan Philharmonic. The soundtrack CD was first released on the 19th of November 2004, one day before the film's Japanese theatrical opening, by Tokuma Japan Communications. Hisaishi also produced Howl's Moving Castle: Symphony Suite, an album of ten re-arranged pieces from the original soundtrack, published on the 21st of January 2004. He and Youmi Kimura co-composed the Howl's Moving Castle CD Maxi-Single, released on the 27th of October 2004, which contains the film's theme song sung by Chieko Baisho, the Japanese voice actor for Sophie, alongside a karaoke version and a piano arrangement of the film's main theme, titled "The Merry-Go-Round of Life."

• 7. Reception and Legacy

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  Howl's Moving Castle premiered at the 61st Venice International Film Festival on the 5th of September 2004, where it won the Osella Award for Technical Achievement. In Japan, the film grossed $14.5 million in its first week and went on to earn $190 million domestically, briefly making it the third most financially successful film in Japanese history, trailing only Titanic and Spirited Away. An additional $46 million came from international markets, for a worldwide total of $236 million. Critical response was divided. USA Today's Claudia Puig praised the film's ability to blend "a childlike sense of wonder with sophisticated emotions and motives." Richard Corliss of Time wrote that "palaces and shimmering lakes, warplanes and fire sprites all come to life at the breath of Miyazaki's graphic genius." Roger Ebert, however, gave the film two and a half out of four stars and called it a "disappointment" compared to Miyazaki's recent work. The English-language dubbing was produced under the supervision of Pete Docter of Pixar and released in the United States by Walt Disney Pictures on the 10th of June 2005. At the 78th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Animated Feature but lost to Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It went on to win four Tokyo Anime Awards including Animation of the Year, Best Director, Best Voice Actor/Actress for Chieko Baisho, and Best Music for Joe Hisaishi. A Nebula Award for Best Script followed in 2007, shared by Miyazaki, Cindy Davis Hewitt, and Donald H. Hewitt. In 2019, a workshop in Aubusson collaborated with Studio Ghibli to create five tapestries based on Miyazaki's work over the following years; two depict scenes from Howl's Moving Castle. In 2025, The New York Times readers placed the film 96th on their list of the 100 best films of the 21st century.