Howl's Moving Castle/ハウルの動く城 (Hauru no Ugoku Shiro) (2004) - Miyazaki's hugely successful, highly strange fantasy

♥♥♥♥

This poster for Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle teases adventure and visually fantastic vistas of epic and wondrous scope

A girl working diligently in a hat shop gets transformed into an old woman by the Witch of the West and goes on an adventure in the search for a reversal of the curse, which brings her to a moving castle and many more fantastic things and characters.

Howl's Moving Castle is an adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' (Year of the Griffin (2000)) same-titled 1986 novel by Japanese master filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke (1997)), who has adapted and directed the film.
Miyazaki has stated that the film was profoundly impacted by the Iraq War (!), which is not something that is in any way noticeable. The film has many funny and lovely scenes and exchanges, and the character animation is delightful. Technically the animation is also incredible, full of wonders of detail, colors and movement. - The castle itself is amazing.

The story is fascinating to watch, but perhaps becomes too aloof in its unconventional strangeness at some point, at least for an audience member such as myself. Howl's Moving Castle is nevertheless a wondrous journey and a film that it is worth watching several times for its artistry and warm and strange originality.

Related posts:

Hayao Miyazaki: Top 10: Best fantasy movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

Spirited Away/千と千尋の神隠し (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) (2001) - Miyazaki's highly Japanese, enormously weird story of a girl

Watch the American trailer for the film here

Cost: 24 mil. $
Box office: 235 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Moving Castle was not supposed to be directed by Miyazaki, who had gone into early retirement at the time, but as the hired director jumped ship, he decided to step up. Upon release, it became a commercial and critical triumph as one of the highest grossing Japanese films ever made: The film made a stunning 190 mil. $ (81 % of the total gross) in its native Japan. In North America, Disney released the film in select cinemas with a star-studded American voice cast, and it grossed 4.7 mil. $ (2 %) there and got Oscar-nominated as Best Animation but lost to the great Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The film made many top 10 lists of its year, and stands at #141 on IMDb's Top 250. Roger Ebert called it one of Miyazaki's "weakest films" and gave it 2½ stars.]

What do you think of Howl's Moving Castle?