Castle In the Sky
At a glance...
- Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
- Released in 1986
- Runtime 124 minutes
- Watched at home
- Final feelings: Missing some of my corny jokes from the dub, but still fantastic.
As a child, I adored this film. I remember as a kid that I was specifically obsessed with the ending song of this film and "memorized" most of the lyrics (not the meaning, just the literal phonetic sounds). I loved that it was adventurous and charming, but also depicted two characters who's heroism came from their willingness to sacrifice themselves. I know for a fact that I cried the first time I saw this.
But, like every other Ghibli film I saw as a kid, I only knew the english dub. I didn't even know that there was a controversy with the soundtracks not being the same as the original Japanese, which I only discovered after not-so-legally downloading the soundtrack (I preferred the english dub soundtrack as a kid, as well). This time, I watched with the original Japanese audio and am once again struck by how much more empty space these films have. In Princess Mononoke, I was immediately convinced that the added flourishes and comic relief in the dub were straightforwardly worse than the original Japanese. Here, however, I was missing some of my favorite joke lines ("scary ride!" is something I still quote to this day, and I hear "make your shirt explode" in my dreams).
Admittedly, this feeling is probably entirely nostalgia. Without that, the mood of this movie is so much more consistent in Japanese. Even the whimsical parts feel bittersweet, like you notice in a profound way how much distance there is between all these characters. The thing that stays constant is Pazu and Sheeta's relationship. In my Summer Wars review, I mentioned how Miyazaki is just doing it better with his boy-girl character relationships, and I probably should have mentioned Pazu and Sheeta as well (and they are perhaps more applicable in that review's case than, say, Ashitaka and San). It feels like Miyazaki is riding the line as close as he can here with depicting adolescent characters who are expressing love towards one another without having anyone ever say they are in love. When the two children first land on the gardens of Laputa, they cheer and twirl around each other while being tied together by rope. When they finally separate, they fall to the ground and look at each other...before finally collapsing in laughter. This moment, which was just preceded with both Pazu and Sheeta sitting together in the crow's nest of the ship, talking about their fears, their hopes, and their friends, is the culmination of an entire first-half of developing friendship and care between the two. It is a deeply intimate moment that feels so sweet and innocent that it doesn't need to be named at all. By the time the two kids land on Laputa, they seemingly laugh at the audience themselves for expecting or hoping for anything more. In Castle in the Sky, we recognize love through its action in the world and need nothing else.
This is not the strongest movie that Studio Ghibli ever made confronting topics of empire, war, and the desire for power and domination. It's not the best on-screen love story in their films, either. But it remains a beautiful film to me in large part because I think the character relationships are so earnest. Oh, and this rewatch reminded me that the ship designs are astounding, I totally forgot about the little glider plane thing and honestly it feels like Studio Ghibli could have made a big splash just designing airships like this for a tabletop setting[^1] or a serialized TV show (actually, how much money did those actually make in Japan in the 80s?). The beauty of this film, like all the best from this studio, is the profound worldbuilding and storytelling that is imbued into each element of the film. Maybe the only part that strains credulity, given what we know historically, is that any empire of Laputa's power would have voluntarily ceased to exist for any reason. With that framing, the film is able to isolate Muska as a uniquely megalomaniacal individual even amongst the existing military forces that want this legendary power, and turns our image of the floating city from a bloody graveyard into an empty and abandoned tomb. With weapons that can cause nuclear-level explosions, it is just a little too fantastical to me to imagine a whole population able to exert domination on that scale all just being wise enough to put the guns down and come back down to earth, with Muska a seemingly isolated incident of future generations forgetting prior wisdom.
Still, it's a great film that, in Japanese, doesn't even sound like a "kid's movie" the way that the english dub does. And the original soundtrack is much better, I was a fool as a child. A rewarding film experience, I think this one is great!