HAURU NO UGOKU SHIRO ( Howl's Moving Castle, 2004) *** It's not exactly a revelation, or even remotely original, to get all excited about the animation coming out of Ghibli Studio, but let me claim one of these seats on the bandwagon. Hayao Miyazaki is the master, but this isn't quite in the league of his son Goro's Tales From Earthsea. But it is comparable, and the slights, and slights-of-hand play to the audience. This one is for younger children, so the deeper philosophical intrusions are sacrificed for a wonderful plotline that is linear only in the temporal sense. It zigs, it zags, you catch up to the characters and fall behind them. It's a lot of fun, if anything even more enjoyable to watch than Earthsea, but without the heavy sensations that can stay with you . The Miyazakis match their animation to the storyline and audience: where Earthsea demanded absolute attention at every moment lest an incredible subtlety escape you, here the screen is filled with wonderful, beautiful or horrible, surprising images: the attention to detail is immaculate and wonderful, but your understanding of what's going on isn't going to swing on missing something that briefly inhabited a corner of the screen or narrative. The sweeping statement on war cannot be lost on any mind, however young or small, and the developed theme of magic as a two-sided sword is more than enough for any particularly verbose critic or theoretician to go on about for a decade or so. Good fun.
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