Some necessary disclaimers:
Quick summary! Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, and based on Diana Wynne Jones’ novel of the same name. It tells the story of Sophie, a young girl working in her family’s hat shop. After she meets and befriends Howl, the handsome wizard of the neighborhood, she is cursed by the Witch of the Waste, who is jealous of their connection. Sophie awakens one morning to find that she is now an old woman. She seeks help from Howl to break her curse, while he himself struggles to evade his conscription to fight in the kingdom’s war.
I have watched Howl’s Moving Castle twice in the last few months. The first time I saw it was in the fall, in the AMC movie theater with the comfy chairs and popcorn. It was my first time in a theater since the pandemic, so there was an added level of specialness to the experience. I have to say that before it began, I was skeptical. I adored the nostalgic aesthetics of Studio Ghibli that I had seen through social media and pop culture, but I was expecting the plot to be a simple and predictable Hero’s Journey with some bread-and-butter message like “friendship is good”. What I found was a vibrant story in a dynamic setting, rich with ruminations on aging, self-image, found family, and war. Needless to say, I was very happy to be wrong.
Firstly, Sophie is a true protagonist. When I watched this movie last weekend with my boyfriend, there was a moment during one of the scenes of Sophie sitting peacefully by the water, where he looked up at me and said quietly, “This is so nice to see”. So much of the content we consume (or at least myself) is centered around gritty, morally-ambiguous anti-heroes. For example, Bojack Horseman (my favorite series) is complex and dark and leaves you wondering what it means to be a decent person, let alone a good one. Stories like these are compelling but almost always leave me nauseous. Howl’s Moving Castle is the antidote. Kindness and gentleness are natural for Sophie, and these are the things that make her strong. And she isn’t fighting to repress something malicious, she is completely genuine. I find it fatiguing to always see the good-natured characters either get taken advantage of by crueler ones or become cold themselves. HMC contests this paradigm, as Sophie’s unconditional love for the people around her is what breaks their curses.
On the topic of love, I have decided (after much deliberation) that my favorite scenes of HMC were not the ones involving her growing feelings for Howl. Surprisingly, they were the little
in-between moments of her and Marco—hanging the laundry out to dry, having a little picnic by the lake, and also the quiet moments that Sophie spends by herself, peacefully reflecting on her old age. What I love about HMC is values more than just romantic love. In fact, I would argue that the love story between Howl and herself does not begin until after the curse is broken, because Howl is so preoccupied with the war that he doesn’t actually spend much time with Sophie at all, though it is clear how he feels about her from fairly early on. Perhaps what is more central to the narrative, is the theme of self-love. In the beginning, Sophie considers herself to be a plain, un-beautiful, ordinary girl, and laments over these thoughts. When she wakes up as an old woman, she acts calmer than one might expect. It seems that her curse, though physically incapacitating, freed her of her insecurities by removing the morbid pressure to be young and beautiful under the threat of aging. Of course, the road isn’t necessarily straight, and she does break down at one point when Howl, an effortlessly beautiful person, overreacts over his change in hair color. But she recovers, coming to peace with her physical existence. By the height of the movie’s action, she is so devoted to saving Howl and her found family that it seems like breaking her own curse has become an afterthought. There is so much power found in self-acceptance, and not even in a vain way. Sophie teaches us that letting go can sometimes help us snap into perspective.
In conclusion, I think that Howl’s Moving Castle achieves warm feelings and nostalgia through innovative and imaginative means. This is something that we crave, now more than ever. This story made me want to hold my loved ones a little tighter, and make sure they know what they mean to me. Not out of fear, just out of gratitude.
