Howl's Moving Castle

Only after walls fall
does the small, ridiculous, cowardly heart
become visible.

I keep that core, let the rest decay,
rebuilding in the debris.

What emerges does so
where my thoughts end
and us remains.

//

Trying to pick up writing poetry as a hobby. The house is such an apt metaphor for Howl's emotional baggage, and it really clicked for me near the end. The house is stripped apart, ripped to its bones, a measly machine, to say the least; yet what emerges from the ruins is Howl's opportunity to rebuild it with his lover. Is that what it's all about? Shedding bare, tearing yourself to basic parts, and braiding your life with another? I don't know, to be honest. But writing poetry about it is a fun exercise.
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This is certainly Miyazaki's best date movie, but it would be dishonest of me to say that I think it's his best work. I think what makes Miyazaki's films, and in particular Spirited Away, so special is how he unfolds the amazing things that can happen when you build the courage to take a leap into the unknown, and how his narrative arcs have a beautiful sense of directed chaos. Spirited Away begins with a frightened, childish Chihiro. By the end, she is still the same age, yet her stride is different, and she puts herself together in a new light. She gains a courage, the ability to say, "I can do it, even if I don't have the instructions." What's even better is the film felt like it was not wasting its time on including scenes that didn't serve the purpose of building to that revelatory moment at the end -- most if not all of the film was, in some way, placing key footholds to arrive at the ending takeaway.

I think that's where Miyazaki is at his best -- when the story is pointed in a singular direction, where the threads do not feel superfluous and are tailored toward a specific endpoint that, when looking back on the film, refracts the story in a totally new light. I think Howl's Moving Castle, while having a touching ending, contains a bit too much superfluousness for my liking. It seems like some threads serve little purpose, as if they are introduced and left lying on the table rather than woven into the ending. I am generally confused as to why this whole war thing was going on. Perhaps there is some political commentary I am not yet understanding, and I could see a world in which, if I chewed a bit more on the relevant details, I could find a way to understand why it was included. But prima facie, I am left thinking that the film has its attention split in a few too many directions. The signal it attempts to regress at the end, while touching and heartfelt, is nonetheless derived from what seems to be too noisy data.