On the other hand, several moments in the film hint at a bigger spiritual world. Howl, for example, shape-shifts back and forth between his human and birdlike forms he also uses a spell to disable the controls of a large warplane and makes his friends invisible for a short time the Witch of the Waste curses Sophie, and she’s instantly 70 years older. Magic is simply a normal part of the fantasy world that director Hayao Miyazaki brings to life.

On one hand, much of the magic seems mechanical in the sense that it’s not clearly drawing from some spiritual or other-worldly power source. The spiritual worldview presented by Howl’s Moving Castle is a muddy one. Only by regaining his lost heart, which he traded for magical powers when he was a young boy, can Howl find release from his prison.Īnd only as Howl and Sophie aid one another-and fall in love in the process-is there any hope for release from their curses. Each time he changes shape, however, it becomes harder for him to return to human form. Instead, believing all war is wrong, the wizard morphs into a giant bird and attacks combatants on both sides. Howl himself is sometimes brazen, sometimes cowardly and always tormented-and he refuses to fight for the king when war erupts (a conflict that’s apparently been engineered by the king’s chief sorceress, Madame Suliman). The magical castle meanders noisily through the countryside like a misshapen mechanical animal and serves as a portal to four different parts of the world as well. Howl shares his castle with a boy-wizard in training named Markl and a fire demon known as Calcifer whose powers not only heat the castle but energize its movements as well. She doesn’t get far before she meets an animated scarecrow she names Turnip, who in turn leads her to the moving castle of Howl-the wizard who saved her in the city. That chance encounter stirs the jealousy of the Witch of the Waste, whose malevolent magic instantly turns Sophie into a 90-year-old woman.ĭejected, Sophie leaves family and friends behind as she trudges into the mountainous wasteland searching for a way to reverse the curse. One day, Sophie’s mundane world is forever altered when a young, mysterious wizard rescues her from the unwanted advances of two soldiers. But she lives in a city where rumors of the bigger world include whispers of war between two kingdoms and stories of renegade witches and wizards-including one whose home is a moving castle. Young Sophie is a wallflower who marks her small-minded days as a faithful employee at her dearly departed father’s hat shop.

Howls moving castle movie