Laputa : Evoking and engaging with our sense of wonder

This is an accreting review of Laputa : Castle in the Sky (1986)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

11 May

This is an accreting review of Laputa : Castle in the Sky (Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta) (1986)

At @CamPicturehouse, Hiyao Miyazaki evoked and with engaged our sense of wonder - Laputa : Castle in the Sky (Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta) (1986)

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 11, 2016

Film references (identifying other films directed by Hayao Miyazaki¹) :

* Akira (1988)

* Howl’s Moving Castle (Hauru no ugoku shiro) (2004) [Hayao M.]

* Jupiter Ascending (2015)

* Princess Mononoke (1997) [Hayao M.]

* Spirited Away (Sento Chihirono kamikakushi) (2001) [Hayao M.]

* The Iron Giant (1999) [based on The Iron Man : A Children's Story in Five Nights, a novel by Ted Hughes, first published in 1968]

-> At @CamPicturehouse, Laputa : Castle in the Sky (Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta) (1986) would remind of The Iron Giant, but Hughes came first...

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 12, 2016

* The Matrix (1999)

* The Wind Rises (Kaze tachinu) (2013) [Hayao M.]


[...]

-> In 1726, when Swift first published what we call Gulliver's Travels, they still gave them snappy titles that smacked of verisimilitude.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 12, 2016

[...]


End-notes

¹ The following list is of motifs that will be familiar from these films (it is given non-exhaustively - simply to show that, as directors Wes Anderson or Woody Allen, for example, might have penchants or pet-themes that run through their films, even more so does Miyazaki, almost as if they are, as the case may be, running jokes, or leitmotifs) :

* Appearances / things not being what they seem (e.g. Princess Mononoke)

* Clouds / cloud formations (e.g. The Wind Rises)

* Flowers / blossoms (e.g. Howl’s Moving Castle)

* Flying-machines (e.g. The Wind Rises, and IMDb (@IMDb) lists Miyazaki's short film called Imaginary Flying Machines (2002))

* Gluttony (e.g. Spirited Away)

* Helpful eccentrics / outsiders (e.g. Spirited Away)

* Literary adaptation (e.g. Howl’s Moving Castle and the novel by Diana Wynne Jones)

* Noble blood / nobility in disguise (e.g. Spirited Away)

* Orphans (e.g. The Wind Rises)

* Powerful older women, behaving somewhat boisterously (e.g. Spirited Away)

* Railways (e.g. Spirited Away)

* The Industrial Revolution (in Western Europe) : factories, quarrying and the like (e.g. Princess Mononoke)

* Working / having to work menially to earn one’s keep (e.g. Spirited Away)


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Funnily enough, no Ginsberg in the entire film ! - or is there ?

This is a review of Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

5 June (5 May 2015, Tweet embedded)

This is a review of Howl’s Moving Castle (Hauru no ugoku shiro) (2004)

A non-exhaustive of some key-words and principal themes in response to the screening of Howl’s Moving Castle (Hauru no ugoku shiro) (2004) last night in Picturehouse Cinemas’ (@picturehouses’) We [heart] Miyazaki retrospective :


* Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450–1516) – paintings of his, such as The Garden of Earthly Delights or The Temptation of St Anthony, for The Castle itself

Howl's Moving Castle! @Film4 #Film4GhibliVote pic.twitter.com/LXTx4BjMxu

— TomPete(@tjthwaites) May 5, 2015

* Prometheus stealing fire from the gods – when Sophie, in the most florid location, sees back to a younger Howl (equally the third Harry Potter book, with the time-turner, and Harry mistaking his own Patronus

* Light / fight / fire / fireside / hearth

* Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books – for the sense of compassion for one’s foes, and for the notion that Howl, as warned by Calcifer, may not be able to change back, if he persists

* Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales – the topos of the loathly lady in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’

* So, also, Cocteau’s gorgeous La Belle et La Bête (Beauty and The Beast) (1946) (and one is beggared by the existence, according to IMDb, of a new take on the story !) - in Sophie’s loving Howl unconditionally, but failing to see her beauty, only his

* Sophie / Granny and Howl / Monster Howl have a connection across time and space - just as with Chihiro / Sen and Haku / Dragon Haku in Spirited Away (2001)

* Abundant flowers – also a feature of Spirited Away, and, more poignantly and sparingly so, The Wind Rises (2013)

* The alpine feel of the non-urban scenery – this could be Austria, or, as @jackabuss sees it, Snowdonia

* Contrasted with the slimy horribleness of the oozing men, made sinisterly jaunty by straw boaters or top hats

* The magical contract that binds someone to another – familiar from J. K. Rowling’s Dobby, but also Spirited Away

* The warfare and war-mongering – a link to that Narnia notion of doors into other worlds that @jackabuss also located, not least since The Pevensey Four have been evacuated on account of The Blitz


To be continued…


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)