Are We All Going to be Okay? Nihilism & Howl's Moving Castle

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Reddit Comments
Captions
Hayao Miyazaki was born in 1941, into a world  already at war. His first evacuation to a new city   was at three years old. When that city was bombed,  when he was four years old, he evacuated again   Hayao is famously anti-war for perfectly human,  understandable, reasons, such as the act of war   continually uprooted his childhood and killed  those around him. Hayao Miyazaki is a lifelong   and devout pacifist. Howl's Moving Castle the film,  makes me feel like I understand him as a person.   This film is loosely based on a novel for young  readers of the same name by Diana Wynne Jones.   Like any film adaptation, or pretty much  every time I've talked about this in the past,   adaptations must stand on their own apart from the  book on which they were based. This is a personal   film for Hayao. Now, I'm gonna talk about nihilism  in a whimsical accidental way a lot in this piece.   I don't think what I'm saying would have made  a lot of sense without 2020 doing the best damn   illustration of a term I'm heretofore making up,  situational nihilism. We are born into a world that   is not the one we want, try as we might the world  does not change, so we make our own world. Nihilism   is sometimes not a choice we make, we pile comforts  one on top of the other for self-care for so long   we might not even realize how much  we are avoiding the world around us.   We don't choose to have no beliefs, they are taken  from us. We didn't choose this the world did this   to us. In other words here comes another breezy  Movies with Mikey banger. Howl in this movie is   a fancy dude, but he's also an utter train wreck.  A story of two kingdoms that rely on Howl so much   that both sides of that war draft him into  their side of it. "His majesty requires that   every witch and wizard aid our homeland." "I bear  an invitation from his majesty the king, please   inform Mr. Pendragon that all witches and wizards  are required to report for duty at the palace."   "They're the same picture." Or a thing he  vehemently doesn't want and before you know it   you're a psychotic bird monster, wait hang on is  that, nope, yep, right there, that's, it says psychotic   bird monster, okay. Before this film, when Hayao was  nominated for an Academy Award for Spirited Away   in 2003, he declined to come to the United States  and participate in an American award show while   that country was simultaneously invading another  country. Kind of a baller move in hindsight.   A move that, gotta check my notes here, yep, did not  end the Iraq war. all of his films are personal, but   this one feels especially so. Feelings and emotions  that have been bubbling up for his entire life,   a film where one of the most delightful and  relatable characters is a literal heart of   fire. All of this as if to say: good morning, we are  all burning away slowly, and everything is fine.   2004's Howl's Moving Castle did quite  well at the box office if you consider   every country except for America, where it did   quite poorly. It opened against Batman Begins  which is unfortunate because I'm pretty sure   Christian Bale was workshopping his batman  character in the english dub of this movie. "Howl! "I'm sorry Sophie, I should have gotten here  sooner." I definitely am not starting a fight,   but sometimes dubs have other experiences nested  within already brilliant things. But did you know:   Pete Doctor got the job to supervise and direct  the english language versions because of how   indispensable he'd been at Pixar since practically  it's beginning. The proto batman alone. "You,   you can't even break your own spell." And then on  June 17th it opened up 12 places behind Batman,   but you know 202 screens versus almost 4 thousand.  Film math isn't real. In a lot of ways Howl's Moving   Castle is movie about trusting whatever obtuse  family unit you've constructed out of the people   that are thrust into your life, and consequently  breaking free of your own self-destructive   nihilism. To put it into as simple words as I can,  fixing your life is going to take more than just   you. Especially when you live in a nationalistic  war state where everyone's partying in streets   because apparently war is dope! Cannon hats!  Oh subtlety, 2021 is here and subtlety is in   a casket being paraded through the streets. Sophie  just wanted to make hats she never asked for this "Sorry looks like you're involved." Sophie, who  inherited her father's hat shop, a character that   just wants to do her job, a character who always  inherits other people's messes, which is sort of   ignoring the obvious which is that Howl's Moving  Castle is effortlessly one of the most moving and   beautifully animated experiences you'll have at  the movies. It pushed envelopes in such subtle ways   it's easy not to notice. The moving castle itself  has this almost Terry Gilliam quality to the way   it moves around. Rotating all these disparate  layers on top of each other to create the   presence of a lumbering mask composed of motorized  band-aids stuck on top of other band-aids, situated   atop four mechanical chicken legs. It is less a  living establishment and more of a series of   additions Howl just sort of magicked into the world  on top of one another. It is an extremely toxic   space for one to live in and all at once it feels  comfortable all the same. I absolutely wouldn't   mind living there for a bit with Calcifer the wise  perfect boy flame sprite. At the beginning of the   film we are introduced to Sophie a milliner  who inherited the weight of her father's business.   The world is suffocating for her, Sophie just makes  hats and largely pushes out the world around her.   The movie even frames the nationalistic war state  as persistently invading the space around Sophie.   Her co-workers go out for a night on the town  fraternizing with the regime and Sophie wants no   part of it. Sophie is trapped in a life she doesn't  love surrounded by a world that is exceedingly   dangerous. She controls very little, so she makes  gun hats and tries to put it out of her mind.   Anyway, members of the armed forces proceed to  be like, we crimin' tonight, and corner Sophie.   Howl, the lonely vampire wizard happens upon  her and helps her escape from the soldiers, but   simultaneously introduces her to the beings  following him which are the henchmen for   the Witch of the Waste y'all! The most uncomplicated Miyazaki  villain ever, her actions are poorly thought out   and abusive as Hell. Sophie takes one walk with  the vampire blood wizard and the witch of the   Waste puts an absolutely unforgivable curse upon  her, the witch makes her old. The witch just takes   Sophie's entire life away from her and ahead of  her just for looking, and worst of all the witch   doesn't even know how to uncurse Sophie, which  karma is going to have something to say about.   The Witch of the Waste is in turn cursed  to live her true age though the outcome is   essentially the same thing as she cursed Sophie  with, which makes her absolutely delightful   even when she has moments of lucidity where she  demonstrably remembers the power she used to wield.   It's a complicated emotion for an audience to feel  the villain's journey was from uncomplicated to   complicated. Or you could talk about turnip  head a cursed prince, maybe the reason your   kingdoms are always at war is because you're throwing  curses around at anyone who looks at you crooked.   Turnip head used to be a prominent war boy mixed up  in all of this, now anything he can't communicate   in basic pogo maneuvers he can't communicate at  all, and as a scarecrow he's willing to sacrifice   himself and his well-being to save his imperfect  family unit. I bet you have a lot of time for   introspection as a scarecrow with a root vegetable  for a face. Did I, did, is that? Or Calcifer, a flame who   needs burnable material to survive and power the  castle, a literal falling star that Howl saved or   cursed depending on your world view. Howl relies  heavily upon him to power and champion his   entire castle, it's exhausting, just literally burn  yourself out, forever, for me, thanks, xoxo Howl.   P.S. I'm glad I saved you. And Marky who  at best you could describe as Howl's   trainee slash unpaid intern, who sure seems to do a  lot around the castle, including poorly faking his   own age to cover for Howl. A big incomprehensible  family unit thrust together through circumstance.   None of the characters in this story make their  own choices, outcomes are merely thrust upon them.   Naturally one accepts their dystopia and turns to  nihilism. If you can't affect change in the world   you turn away from the world, at least until  things start getting better. Each of these people   is completely helpless and alone demonstrably.  they come together and they're able to move   forward. Studio Ghibli films often require a  lot of unpacking to understand the motivations   of all characters involved, but here they're  all being crushed under the weight of a world   and system they do not control. On some level  all of them have given up, but on another level. Over the years I've used this show to illuminate  struggles in my own life as illustrated by film, it   was cathartic to share why certain films affected  me at certain times. Art can be pretty cool like   that. Perhaps other people felt the same, Moon being  a film about a dude's body dying while my body was   doing exactly the same. I can't even listen to  my voice in that episode anymore because I'm   so messed up. I mean this is a sci-fi movie  episode and I tend to knock those out of   the park. In the last couple years I've  definitely shied away from getting too   personal in an effort to let film stand more  on its own and less about my own experience.   I chose Howl because I wanted to comment on  the creeping nihilism we were all beginning to feel.   I know everyone knows what this feels like, what  if anything mattered about the soul devouring   crucible we all experienced through the bulk of  2020. We rely on the people we never expected to   sometimes too much, which brings us back  to Howl's Moving Castle, a film where Howl   builds this extravagant castle that never  really stops moving, a castle that does   not survive the film. I thought I had a pretty  solid episode written that spoke to the moment   we are in and then the winter storms tore through  Texas in late February. Teara and I were forced to   evacuate our home after almost two days without  power, we were literally burning scraps of wood   we found in the garage to heat food to at least  have something warm to eat, it wasn't the best.   Luckily other friends who had some power were  able to put us up, what we didn't know while   away from the house was that the pipes in our  attic and walls were bursting and flooding the   entire house and basically ruining everything but  the basic structure, I guess. Howl's Moving Castle   also does not survive the movie, the irony was not  lost on me, which led me to a simple realization:   we are all Sophie. It would be so simple if all we  had to do was make hats, that things weren't waiting   in the shadows, unbeknownst to us. Sophie never  did anything wrong. Howl sucked her into his   wildly out of control life, a pretty horrible thing  happened to her but that was the situation she was   in, people were counting on her. It's a movie where  the characters learn to see outside of themselves   and that seems pretty relevant to me right now. We  can't give in to nihilism. Life really never does   get easier, maybe you just get better at navigating  it. I wonder how Hayao Miyazaki must feel about it   finally unburdening feelings and emotions that  he has felt literally since he was three years   old, but perhaps it's easier to say, good morning, we  are all burning away slowly, and everything is fine. This episode is sponsored by, uh, us, I  guess? I guess consider this part an   ad. The shirt type that has always been good to  us as a business was the fight less, talk more,   say sorry sometimes shirt, that very fun saying  came from the Princess Mononoke episode, which   feels either ironic or clairvoyant at this  point in time. We actually had a new design for   that shirt printed up and ready to go in early  2021, but obviously we had to vacate our home   that made us temporarily delay the launch,  power down our store and the show and of   course lug a house full of merchandise and  our entire lives across DFW in a Rav4 because... WHEEE! We are just now back to capable, have  an apartment and a base of operation   and it really wouldn't suck to sell  some shirts right now. Thank you all   for the support during this frankly strange and  surreal time, it has definitely been all caps   A THING, also there's gary pins  I feel like I buried that lead.   Hi, hello, it's me again, the, the guy with the  doing the voice in the thing you're watching.   Um, hey, check out our patreon, patreon.com/movieswithmikey  that would really help us out in addition   to you know buying our shirts or  whatever. So this was a funny episode, um   watching it, we, we sort of clued into the the just  distant stares of everyone in this movie and the   nihilism sort of inherent to, uh, Howl's Moving  Castle and then we lost our house and then I   was like wait a minute I'm dealing with the exact  same, oh beans, um, so that was, that was a thing.   We have an apartment now, we have a temporary  workspace, so it's going okay. I mean the nihilism   is always there and so to this episode is always  there, uh that's fun. F*** insurance companies. Bye!
Info
Channel: FilmJoy
Views: 216,291
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: howls moving castle, howls video essay, miyazaki, ghibli, studio ghibli, hayao miyazaki, movies with mikey, mwm, mikey neumann, filmjoy, film joy, movies with mickey, joyus media, film review, howls mwm, positive movie review, film analysis
Id: 3V21vjxH8VE
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 17min 4sec (1024 seconds)
Published: Fri Mar 12 2021
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.