Castle in the Sky

Miyazaki’s 1986 animated film was the first production under the now world famous, but then quite risky venture, Studio Ghibli. The film was the third feature by Miyazaki, who by now had assembled a strong team of creators under his helm, including Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata, producer Toshio Suzuki, and composer Joe Hisaishi.

In Miyazaki’s previous two films, Lupin III: The Castle of
Cagliostro (read my essay on it HERE if you haven’t already) and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (HERE), he explored some staples of classic fairy tale and hero fiction like royal families, usurped thrones, damsels in distress, chivalry, destiny, fighting evil forces, and a bit of magic as well. Castle in the Sky carries on Miyazaki’s interest in these themes while presenting itself as a more straightforward fable/heroic quest, albeit still set in a mythic, imagined European past.

The landscapes and those objects and persons that fill the space in the film were based off of the Welsh countryside and the people Miyazaki encountered there on a vacation years prior. His protagonist in Castle in the Sky, Pazu, lives in a provincial mining city. He is a young man who lives alone and manages to support himself with a job working on machines for the mining operation in town. But his real passion is airplanes. He has built his own small-scale aircraft and understands the ins and outs of the building process pretty well it seems. His mother and father are both gone now and he resides in their old home where his father’s old flying paraphernalia are still around. Of particular interest is the framed black and white photo of what appears to be a Castle hidden amongst storm clouds. This is the fabled Laputa, the Castle in the Sky, which his father photographed years prior whilst venturing through a particularly horrendous storm.

In Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, a young princess of the Duchy of Cagliostro was under duress as her cousin, The Duke of Cagliostro, attempted to wed her to fulfill an ancient prophecy of the family and gain the hidden treasures of the Cagliostros. In Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, we find a young princess thrust in the midst of violent conflicts between nations and forces of nature as her father is killed by marauding Tolmekian troops. She must then take on his hi duties and attempt to save her people and fulfill an ancient destiny. In Castle in the Sky, Pazu finds Sheeta falling from the clouds. Her amulet, made of volucite (a miraculous material that is the cause of Laputa’s floating), protects her and softens the fall as Pazu attempts to catch her. Pazu and Sheeta begin an adventure that seems destined or fated, like in the stories of Miyazaki’s previous protagonists, but this time, the result of the adventure is not fated. Pazu and Sheeta must fight against all odds to stop the other surviving Laputan from co-opting the castle’s destructive power and unleashing it as an imperial military tool against the other nations of the world.

Some of the scenes in this film are amongst the most beautifully animated in Miyazaki’s oeuvre. Hand-drawn credits that echo the animation styles of Frederick Back and Moebius, the miraculous first meeting between Pazu and Sheeta, the emotional power of the first robot they encounter on Laputa as it interacts with biological creatures, and the flight of the Laputan tree at the center of the Castle in the film’s epilogue. This last scene illustrates a strong ecological point at the heart of Miyazaki’s works, that our society and technology act in a manner antithetical to nature. They often destroy it and cover it over to reach towards the sky. However, it is the bedrock of all our endeavors and without its stability, our technology and our society, and our well-being and human flourishing are no longer guaranteed. The castle crumbles and reveals the roots of the tree beneath, and more, it reveals that the castle needed the tree, but the tree didn’t need any of us.

 

Cody

(Next up My Neighbor Totoro!)