Book vs film: Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

The Book Corner season 5: Book vs film. Episode 8: Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

The whimsical beauty of Hayao Miyazaki’s hit 2004 animation of Howl’s Moving Castle has eclipsed the clever fairytale of Diana Wynne Jones’s 1986 novel. Which one’s your favourite?

• Howl’s Moving Castle: the story
• Howl’s Moving Castle: a writer’s review
• Howl’s Moving Castle: the film

The Book Corner

The Book Corner is a regular break from critiquing for the writing group of my former MA colleagues. We work out a theme and everyone chooses a book that we’ll read and discuss. Previous themes have included literary genre award winners and books that shaped our writing journeys. So far this year, I’m just about keeping up with the schedule as we read them.

As usual, it’s an odd mix with a skew towards SF and fantasy. Catch up with Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, The Dark Tower vol 1 — The Gunslinger by Stephen King and The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin vs Tales from Earthsea by Goro Miyazaki, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and The Colour Out Of Space by HP Lovecraft.

Howl’s Moving Castle: the story

Howl’s Moving Castle has a lot of story, with subplots for a dozen minor characters. Fortunately, they resolve into the main plot around Sophie Hatter, the wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste.

Simpering 18-year-old Sophie is the eldest of three orphaned sisters in Market Chipping, a very English fairytale town in the magical kingdom of Ingary. She works in the family milliner’s shop, but she’s convinced of the popular superstition that the eldest child will never be successful. Her stepmother enjoys the wealth brought in my Sophie’s hat-making talents and courting new husbands.

The Witch of the Waste — an infamous sorceress — visits the hat shop, accuses Sophie of being a witch and curses her to become an old crone. Sophie doesn’t know it but the Witch is correct: she can talk life into lifeless objects. She leaves the shop seek help for her affliction, telling no-one.

An exhausted Sophie encounters the sinister floating castle of notorious wizard Howl, which roams the hills around Market Chipping. Despite her fears, she thinks the wizard might fix her predicament, but the curse also stops her telling anyone about it. She jumps on board and discovers an untidy kitchen where she falls asleep. On waking, she meets the wizard’s teenaged apprentice Michael, and Calcifer, a fire demon trapped in the hearth.

Sophie appoints herself cleaning lady to the castle and strikes a bargain with Calcifer to lift her curse if she can break his contract. The only problem: neither Howl nor Calcifer can disclose the main clause. Her only clue is a mysterious poem.

The wizard of woo

The dandyish Howl grudgingly accepts Sophie’s help as he goes about an apparently carefree life. His main passtime is romancing a series of women including Sophie’s younger sister, Lettie.

Sophie learns that the kitchen’s door also exits to places other than Market Chipping. There’s Porthaven, an idyllic fishing town, Kingsbury, the capital of Ingary, and modern-day Wales. Howl was born there as Howell Jenkins, and his family think he’s an idler who disappears for months on end. While he’s vain and cowardly, he’s also intelligent, charming, endearing and occasionally considerate.

The king of Ingary calls upon Howl to find his brother, who has gone missing, and to kill the Witch of the Wastes. Howl doesn’t want to help because the Witch has already cursed him.

The Witch captures Sophie by pretending that she has kidnapped Howl’s current love interest, Miss Angorian. Howl defeats the Witch, but discovers that Miss Angorian is really the Witch’s fire demon. It wants to kill Howl and take his head to create the perfect human vessel for itself.

Miss Angorian tricks her way into the castle and siezes Calcifer to control Howl. The wizard kept Calcifer alive by giving him his heart in exchange for magical power. Sophie gives Calcifer life so he can break his contract and restore Howl’s heart, then Howl destroys Miss Angorian.

Calcifer lifts Sophie’s curse but decides to stay in the castle. Howl had all along known Sophie was under a spell, and they have fallen in love while she was disguised.

Howl’s Moving Castle: a writer’s review

Diana Wynne Jones begins Howl’s Moving Castle with a bold announcement that this fairy tale won’t play by the rules.

The heroine should be the ugly step-sister, her stepmother is far from wicked and there are not one but two evil magicians. Readers who don’t pay attention will miss out on red herrings and important details.

As a boy, I would have found the opening chapters all too twee and girly, though Jones wastes no time turning Sophie’s life upside-down. Her characters and locations are vibrant, and the story never seems more than a few pages from a fresh mystery or surprise.

Sophie’s curse also transforms her into a heroine determined to save herself and speak her mind. The transformational power of identity is a key theme, found in multiple characters and locations.

Even Wales feels real

Ingary has enough context that it feels like a real place, able to exist beyond the confines of the story. Indeed, Wales feels as fantastic as anywhere else when it’s seen through Sophie’s eyes.

Despite the many threads demanded by a large cast, everything is tied up as far as it needs to be. The central romance draws on a trope of enemies to lovers, but their attraction develops organically. Howl’s actions win Sophie’s affection, not his good looks, and she remains a crone until the denouement.

The castle also provides a venue for comic relief as her attempts to tidy the castle unleash as much chaos as order. These set pieces are crucial to the development of an alternative family for Sophie in her exile.

Even the Witch proves a tragic villain, self-destructively addicted to the fire demon’s power. It’s a warning to Howl and Calcifer, and makes her defeat appear like an act of mercy.

Howl’s Moving Castle: the film

Hayao Miyazaki’s animated vision streamlines the complex subplots and busy cast, and his steampunk realisation of the castle is wildly different yet fabulously successful on screen.

The most dramatic differences affect Howl and the Witch of the Waste. The cowardly wizard becomes a Batman-esque hero, playboy by day and winged warrior by night. The Witch is a minor threat, turned into a helpless old lady in a show of the real villain’s power.

The flying battleships are beautifully drawn from the art of science fiction’s silver age, and the airborne set-pieces are a highlight. It’s impossible not to love the scene when Sophie, Markl and the scarecrow hang washing on the castle as she tidies their home. Calcifer is playfully portrayed as a devilish yet loveable fire demon.

The real threat is Madam Suliman, an evil wizard-politician who controls the king of Ingary and bombs her own people in a senseless war. There’s an obvious message of “war bad, politicians evil” but Suliman is moustache-twirlingly unsubtle and one-dimensional.

Sophie is sadly diminished from a sorceress in her own right to a gentled love interest for Howl, there to draw out his sensitive side. More than anything, this left a bad taste after the novel.

This is the second Studio Ghibli adaptation that we’ve seen this season. It shares with Tales From Earthsea a shallow, fragile beauty that bears little scrutiny. You’ll enjoy this if you buy into the Ghibli experience but there were key moments where it gave me a hard bounce.

What’s better, book or film? The film’s as beautiful and charming as you’d expect, but Miyazaki takes an unforgivable liberty with Sophie’s character and clumsy moral messaging.

The Book Corner will return

The group is still arguing about the theme of our next list, but there will be another season of the Book Corner. If it’s taking a while to happen, I’ll pull something from my recent reading list next month.