Miyazaki Madness, Part 10: "Howl's Moving Castle" is beautiful and beguiling

A movie whose layers never stop unfolding

On Thursdays, I’m publishing reviews of classic movies, including pieces that have never appeared online before taken from my book 200 Reviews, available now in Paperback or on Kindle (which you should really consider buying, because it’s an awesome collection!). In this series, we are examining the filmography of my all-time favorite movie director - and newly minted two-time Oscar winner with his win for The Boy and the Heron - Hayao Miyazaki! We will be looking at all of his theatrical feature films along with the movies he wrote but did not direct, for a total of 15 weeks of Miyazaki Madness! The series continues today with one of the director’s most fascinating works, 2004’s Howl’s Moving Castle. Enjoy…

Howl’s Moving Castle

2004, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Originally published in 200 Reviews, based on an unpublished excerpt from 2013 and a review for The Denver Post’s Colorado Kids from June 10th, 2005.

One of Hayao Miyazaki’s most mysterious, enchanting, and complex films, Howl’s Moving Castle also bears distinction as one of the most important filmgoing moments in my entire life: The moment I fell in love with the world of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.

While the first Miyazaki film I ever watched was Kiki’s Delivery Service on Disney’s VHS release as a young child, I wasn’t yet aware of concepts like ‘directors,’ let alone ‘anime’ – it was just another tape I enjoyed. I saw Spirited Away in 2002 during its original theatrical run in the United States, at age 10, but I bounced off it pretty hard that first time; even accounting for Kiki’s Delivery Service, I had simply never seen anything like it, and the film scared and confused me more than anything. By the time Howl’s Moving Castle came to America in the summer of 2005, I had been regularly reviewing movies for the Colorado Kids for a full year, had started reading some manga and watching some anime, and was beginning to get a little more adventurous with what I would watch; so despite my misgivings from a continued negative perception of Spirited Away, I agreed to go to the press screening and write a review.