Compare the novelistic and animated treatments In Howl’s Moving Castle. How successfully does Miyazaki explore the character’s Sophie and Howl through metamorphosis?
(Directed by Hayao Miyazaki and released in 2004)
(Written by Diana Wynne Jones 1986)
Film VS Book
Similarities and Differences.
“Metamorphosis is used to visually represent a characters emotions, state of mind or well-being.” - Studio Ghibli: The films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata - By Michelle Le Blanc, Colin Odell
Sophie's Metamorphosis
Howl also undergoes a physical metamorphosis into the large black bird. This façade is terrifying, intimidating but also somewhat beautiful and mysterious. These words seem to fit the description of Howl himself as a character. His alter-ego is, in a sense, an extension of who he really is, even though he may not particularly agree with this description. When Howl goes to a dark place (in his life) and feels lost and hopeless the bird creature he becomes looks more frightening and even slightly sickly. When Howl has gained confidence and feels courageous, rushing to save Sophie when the war has broken out in the streets, his bird self appears more heroic, proud, and healthy.
Calcifer warns Howl that if he doesn’t stop changing into his bird form it could be dangerous and he could lose the ability to appear as he really is in human form. The longer he stays in the bird form the greater the chances are that he will forget who he truly is and be imprisoned in the bird form. This result is seen in some wizards when Howl visits the “black portal.” The importance of knowing yourself and who you truly are, as well as never losing hold of that knowledge is a theme Miyazaki seems to be implementing through this portion of the film."
- CAN ALSO BE SEEN IN OTHER OF HIS FILMS SUCH AS SPIRITED AWAY- CHIHIRO REMEMBERING HER NAME AND IDENTITY SO SHE ISN'T TRAPPED BY UBABA
Calcifer: I can't stand the fire and gunpowder. Those dopey guys have absolutely no manners.
“Yes, you are nosy. You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all.” -Howl
“I think we ought to live happily ever after," and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would be a good deal more hair-raising than any storybook made it sound, though she was determined to try. "It should be hair-raising," added Howl.
Transformations in Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle
In Miyazaki’s fantasies, however, wars are portrayed as senseless and horrible. The heroes are generally not on either side of the war, but are caught between the two. And their struggle is not to win the war, but to defuse it.
ANTI-WAR THEMES: Miyazaki changes subject material to further address themes that he has explored in other of his works (FILMS WITH WAR)
AFFECT ON CHARACTERS?
HOWL had to be made into a more serious character to address this theme.
In book, the Witch of the Waste remains the antagonist but in the Miyazaki version, she becomes good, potentially Miyazaki trying to make a point that no one is truly good or evil but sometimes misguided by greed and other motivations.
Demands of medium?
(Written by Diana Wynne Jones 1986)
Film VS Book
Similarities and Differences.
“Metamorphosis is used to visually represent a characters emotions, state of mind or well-being.” - Studio Ghibli: The films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata - By Michelle Le Blanc, Colin Odell
My Question
I have chosen to focus on the metamorphosis experienced by Howl and Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle and whether the theme of metamorphosis explores the characters properly.
“Sophie in Howl’s Moving Castle is not transformed in to an old woman magically; in a crucial sense, the change is also brought about by her own lack of self confidence”- Studio Ghibli: The films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata- By Michelle Le Blanc, Colin Odell
Howl's Metamorphosis
‘Howl and Sophie are related in that they both are unhappy with the way they look. While Sophie’s character basically accepts the fact that she thinks she is not beautiful, Howl does not. Howl uses magic and potions to keep his appearance in the exact way he approves of. He is horrified when “grandma” Sophie cleans his bathroom and the potions end up turning his hair from a golden color to a deep black. Interestingly enough, Howl can see Sophie’s true beauty even through the mask of an old woman and Sophie accepts and loves Howl regardless of his hair colour and mysterious behaviour.’
‘Howl and Sophie are related in that they both are unhappy with the way they look. While Sophie’s character basically accepts the fact that she thinks she is not beautiful, Howl does not. Howl uses magic and potions to keep his appearance in the exact way he approves of. He is horrified when “grandma” Sophie cleans his bathroom and the potions end up turning his hair from a golden color to a deep black. Interestingly enough, Howl can see Sophie’s true beauty even through the mask of an old woman and Sophie accepts and loves Howl regardless of his hair colour and mysterious behaviour.’
Calcifer warns Howl that if he doesn’t stop changing into his bird form it could be dangerous and he could lose the ability to appear as he really is in human form. The longer he stays in the bird form the greater the chances are that he will forget who he truly is and be imprisoned in the bird form. This result is seen in some wizards when Howl visits the “black portal.” The importance of knowing yourself and who you truly are, as well as never losing hold of that knowledge is a theme Miyazaki seems to be implementing through this portion of the film."
- CAN ALSO BE SEEN IN OTHER OF HIS FILMS SUCH AS SPIRITED AWAY- CHIHIRO REMEMBERING HER NAME AND IDENTITY SO SHE ISN'T TRAPPED BY UBABA
Film Quotes:
"Little mouse"- referring to Sophie, by two soldiers (In Book by Howl)
Old Sophie:"Your clothes finally suit you"
Old Sophie: "Never felt so peaceful before"
Old Sophie: "The nice thing about being old is you haven't got much to lose"
[ON GREEN SLIME]
Markl: [Shadows begin to creep from walls] He's calling the spirits of darkness... I saw him do this once before when a girl dumped him!
Howl: "I give up, I see no point in living if I can't be beautiful"
[ON WAR]
Howl: This war is terrible, they bomb from the southern coast to the northern border. It's all in flames now.
Calcifer: I can't stand the fire and gunpowder. Those dopey guys have absolutely no manners.
Howl: My own kind attacked me today.
Calcifer: Who? The Witch of the Wastes?
Howl: No, some hack wizards who turned themselves into monsters for the king.
Calcifer: Those wizards are going to regret doing that. They'll never change back into humans.
Howl: After the war, they won't recall they ever were human.
Old Sophie: A battleship?
Howl: On its way to burn cities and people
Old Sophie: The enemy's? Ours?
Howl: What difference does it make?
Book Quotes:
 |
| "Eyes like Marbles"- Sophie |
“Yes, you are nosy. You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all.” -Howl
“I think we ought to live happily ever after," and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would be a good deal more hair-raising than any storybook made it sound, though she was determined to try. "It should be hair-raising," added Howl.
"And you'll exploit me," Sophie said.
"And then you'll cut up all my suits to teach me.”
“Really, these wizards! You'd think no one had ever had a cold before! Well, what is it?" she asked, hobbling through the bedroom door onto the filthy carpet.
"I'm dying of boredom," Howl said pathetically. "Or maybe just dying.”
“I'm going up to my room now, where I may die.”- Howl
“By now it was clear that Howl was in a mood to produce green slime any second. Sophie hurriedly put her sewing away. "I'll make some hot buttered toast," she said. "Is that all you can do in the face of tragedy??" Howl asked. "Make toast!”
“My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.” -Howl
"I'm a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell myself I'm not doing it!” -Howl
“A fickle heart is the only constant in this world”
“Interesting things did seem to happen, but always to somebody else.”
"I do mean you! Look!" Howl shrieked. He sat down with a thump on the three-legged stool and jabbed at his wet head with his fingers. "Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs!"
Michael and Sophie bent nervously over Howl's head. it seemed the usual flaxen colour right down to the roots. The only difference might have been a slight, very slight, trace of red. Sophie found that agreeable. It reminded her a little of the colour her own hair should have been.
"I think it's nice," she said.
"Nice!" screamed Howl. "You would! You did it on purpose. You couldn't rest until you made me miserable too. Look at it! It's ginger! I shall have to hide until it's grown out!" He spread his arms out passionately. "Dispair!" he yelled. "Anguish! Horror!”
“Howl said to Sophie, "I've been wondering all along if you would turn out to be that lovely girl I met on May Day. Why were you scared then?”
“It was a perfectly normal May Day, but Sophie was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume spotted Sophie and decided to accost her as well, Sophie shrank into a shop doorway and tried to hide. The young man looked at her in surprise. "It's all right, you little gray mouse," he said laughing rather pityingly. "I only want to buy you a drink. Don't look so scared.”
“Tantrums are seldom about the thing they appear to be about.”
“It was odd. As a girl, Sophie would have shriveled with embarrassment at the way she was behaving. As an old woman, she did not mind what she did or said. She found that a great relief.”
“Of course you hate getting angry!” she retorted. “You don’t like anything unpleasant, do you? You’re a slitherer-outer, that’s what you are! You slither away from anything you don’t like!”
“Howl’s very fickle,” said Calcifer. “He’s only interested until the girl falls in love with him. Then he can’t be bothered with her.”
[GREEN SLIME DESCRIPTION]
“Inside, Howl was still sitting on the stool. He sat in an attitude of utter despair. And he was covered all over in thick green slime. There were horrendous, dramatic, violent quantities of green slime – oodles of it. It covered Howl completely. It draped his head and shoulders in sticky dollops, heaping on his knees and hands, trickling in glops down his legs and dripping off the stool in sticky strands. It was in oozing ponds and crawling pools over most of the floor. Long fingers of it had crept into the hearth. It smelled vile."
Metamorphosis and Identity: Psychoanalytical Notes.
Metamorphosis in Anime
‘変身 (henshin), as metamorphosis is called in Japanese, lies at the very core of animation; the habitual stance towards its role in anime is that it supports the construction of identity in human society by tackling and transcending the notions of species, social status, gender or age.
The transformations in Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle are remarkable primarily by their omnipresence. Both movies start with, and their plots indeed rely on, a radical change in the social roles, (and, in the case of Howl’s Moving Castle, the age and appearance) of Chihiro and Sophie. This is accompanied in both stories by the girls entering a magical realm.
In Spirited Away, this is represented by the bathhouse, equivalent to the world of the spirits. In Howl’s Moving Castle, it is the magic castle itself which shelters Sophie after she is cursed by an evil witch and has become an old woman.
Transformations take various shapes: moving from one physical place to another, shifts in appearance, zoomorphism or changing of age, as well as acquiring new roles, names and personality traits. Four main questions arise, which will be dealt with in the following sections, although not in this particular order:
First,can we equal the structure and function of the process of initiation with that of the metamorphosis in the anime?
Secondly, how can Lacanian psychoanalytical theory serve towards the interpretation of the concepts of initiation and metamorphosis?
Thirdly, what is the role of language and which significance does the uncovering of the male characters’ histories take?
Finally, what exactly is “identity” – or can one even speak of something of the sort – and how do the two anime ultimately portray this notion?’
Metamorphosis in Ghibli and how it effects these characters AND other characters in there films:
Eg: Spirited Away, Ponyo, Princess Kaguya etc
Ghibli are known for using metamorphosis as a way of expressing a multitude of different things through animation.
The Witch of the Waste goes from looking quite intimidating and large to becoming a frail, almost demented, old lady.(How society views the older people?)
Much like in Spirited Away, where it portrays the negative effects of greed as well as expressing the the look vs the role of the character.
Eg No face, seemingly harmless until being surrounded by the greed of others.
Interesting take on the character who remained evil throughout the whole of the book.
Emotional State of Characters
Sophie
Sophie changes depending on emotions in the film
When she feels younger and confident, she appears younger and when she regresses back to her less confident self, she because older
Doesn’t happen in book.- Romance doesn’t happen until further in to the story
Sophie doesn’t even like Howl for most of the book.
Howl
The giant bird creature he becomes
(The more he changes the harder it is for him to come back)
Sophie accepts him for what he is.
In book he does not become the creature, he is a player and doesn’t seem to have this darker element to his character. WHY?
Miyazaki's anti war themes in Ghibli Films -
https://medium.com/dan-sanchez/miyazaki-s-beautiful-antiwar-dreams-44951be1be11#.mqyop4nc1In Miyazaki’s fantasies, however, wars are portrayed as senseless and horrible. The heroes are generally not on either side of the war, but are caught between the two. And their struggle is not to win the war, but to defuse it.
The characters who pursue war — generally government officials — are portrayed as vainglorious and arrogant schemers who rashly court cataclysm for the sake of their grandiose ambitions.
The climax of the film comes not with the hero impaling or detonating his foe, as in so many Hollywood movies, or in the villain falling to his doom, as in so many Disney animated films. Miyazaki’s heroes achieve victory, not through the destruction of their enemies
The loving and forgiving attitude of the hero sometimes even prevails to the point of converting villains into friends.
Grave of the Butterflies
It is the last year of the Second World War. American bombers drop napalm canisters on Kobe, Japan, setting the picturesque city of wood, canvas, and paper alight. A young mother is caught in the conflagration, suffers greatly, then succumbs to her disfiguring burns. With the father fighting at sea, her adolescent son Seita must fend for himself and for his 5-year old sister Setsuko as famine stalks the country. In spite of all his efforts, Seita must watch as Setsuko, an imaginative, fun-loving child, becomes emaciated, sickens, weakens, and eventually dies of malnutrition.
This is the story told in Studio Ghibli’s 1988 animated film Grave of the Fireflies, and it is no less harrowing and haunting for being a “cartoon.” As Roger Ebert wrote in his 4-star review:
“‘Grave of the Fireflies’ is an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation. (…) ‘Grave of the Fireflies’ is a powerful dramatic film that happens to be animated, and I know what the critic Ernest Rister means when he compares it to ‘Schindler’s List’ and says, ‘It is the most profoundly human animated film I’ve ever seen.’ (…)
Yes, it’s a cartoon, and the kids have eyes like saucers, but it belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made.”
Howl's Moving Castle
Miyazaki was so angered by the Iraq War that for a time he boycotted travel to America. He said that his outrage over the war had a major influence on his Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). That film centres around a war between two neighboring countries (repeatedly referred to as “this stupid war”) in which even magicians have been enlisted. Howl is a draft-dodging renegade magician who stays free by roving from place to place in an ambulating, teleporting magico-mechanical castle and by keeping multiple identities. When asked by his beloved Sophie how many aliases he has, he answers, “as many as I need to keep my freedom.”
One side of the war is masterminded by a Palpatine/Dick Cheney-like sorceress who had originally trained Howl. Now, she wants her errant “Sith” disciple either conscripted, drained of his powers, or dead. She serves as sort of a magical prime minister to the country’s king, a ridiculous figure who boyishly exults over his war and fancies himself a brilliant strategist. I strongly suspect Miyazaki had George W. Bush in mind when creating this character.
When Howl finally does intervene in the war, he does so, not by partaking in the slaughter of civilians perpetrated by both sides, but by wrecking the weapons of war being used for that slaughter.
The film’s most glorious moment is when Howl and Sophie see a flying battleship appear and violate the beautiful serenity of his long-time refuge: a lovely little cottage amid a field of flowers.
Howl: “What is that thing doing out here?”
Sophie: “A battleship?”
Howl: “Looking for more cities to burn.”
Sophie: “Is it the enemy’s or one of ours?”
Howl: “What difference does it make? Those stupid murderers.”
Then, with a wave of his hand, Howl disables the ship by magically disconnecting its wiring.
This is Miyazaki at his finest. The bombing of cities is mass murder, regardless of whether it is done by our government in our name or by “the enemy.”
In Howl, as in both Nausicaä and Mononoke, true victory comes, not from the conquest of one war belligerent by another, but by both simply choosing to cease to fight, having seen the futility of the war, thanks to the exploits of the heroes.
Compare the
novelistic and animated treatments In Howl’s Moving Castle. How successfully
does Miyazaki explore the character’s Sophie and Howl’s metamorphosis?
Intro
Studio Ghibli are known
for exploring the theme of metamorphosis in there works. This can be seen in almost
all of their productions such as Spirited Away, Ponyo, (etc). Therefore, it
comes as no surprise that they chose to add it their interpretation of Howl’s
Moving Castle. It is always interesting the explore the different strength of a
novelistic narrative approach against an animated film where the use of images
is used. In novelist is always much easier to describe the inner feelings,
motivations and changes in characters, however in films of all types, but
particularly animated films, it is far harder to do that. Films have strengths
in that the actual images and particularly the animated image can be more
extreme than the live action film making allows the physical manifestation of
the characters change to become more obvious. It is a very fine animated film
maker whose skill allows him in a very refined way to change characterization gradually
and subtlety to in some respects recreate the novelistic experience of the
internal working and metamorphosis of the individual.
Para 1.) The Role of a character.
Howl’s a more
romantic character in film. WHY?
- Does the book allow him to become a more complex character?
In the book Howl's portrayed as rude but also has an underlying kind element to his personality which is discovered as you get to know the character and what he has done for other characters eg, taking in Micheal as an orphan. - This be able because the ability of the noval to create more complex characterisation of Howl, therefore allowing him multiple motivations and layers to his character.
- Does the film want him to be likeable? if so, WHY?
Potentially needed to get into the mind set and psych of Sophie without her saying it verbally. (Does occasionally, "When you're old.....")
- However some parts remain the same such as, The Slime Scene. WHY?
Para 2.)
Major Changes in the films narrative. WHY?
Has an effect on Howl’s
looks, turning into a massive bird creature- Miyazaki making a point about the
effects war can have on the individual.
- Miyazaki changes the plot of the story from half way point. WHY?
In book, the Witch of the Waste remains the antagonist but in the Miyazaki version, she becomes good, potentially Miyazaki trying to make a point that no one is truly good or evil but sometimes misguided by greed and other motivations.
Demands of medium?
CONCLUSION
Animation is the bridge
.
References:
Film Directed by Hayao Miyazaki and released in 2004
Howl's Moving Castle, Written by Diana Wynne Jones 1986
Studio Ghibli: The films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata - By Michelle Le Blanc, Colin Odell
https://medium.com/dan-sanchez/miyazaki-s-beautiful-antiwar-dreams-44951be1be11#.mqyop4nc1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10816014/Hayao-Miyazaki-interview-I-think-the-peaceful-time-that-we-are-living-in-is-coming-to-an-end.html
http://iafor.org/archives/offprints/accs2012-offprints/ACCS2012_0017.pdf
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10816014/Hayao-Miyazaki-interview-I-think-the-peaceful-time-that-we-are-living-in-is-coming-to-an-end.html
http://iafor.org/archives/offprints/accs2012-offprints/ACCS2012_0017.pdf
