‘Twas Miyazaki night number three, and his third feature film City in the Clouds was on the menu. It’s rather amazing to me how good his films are, right off the bat. We’ve already seen some range: a daring adventure, a grand epic. What does Hayao have for us next, and can he make it 3 for 3? Yup.
THE BLURB:
Young orphan Sheeta and her kidnapper, Col. Muska, are flying to a military prison when their plane is attacked by a gang of air pirates led by the matronly Dola. Escaping from a mid-air collision via a magic crystal around her neck, Sheeta meets fellow orphan Pazu and the pair join forces to discover the mystical floating city of Laputa while pursued by both Muska and the pirates, who lust for the city’s myriad treasures.
WHAT WORKED:
Okay…we’re three for three in movies now that involve a castle of some kind. Hayao LOVES him some castles…and you know what? I do too. It’s like dungeons in the original series of Star Trek: they just work. They’re always fun. I won’t give anything away about what the Castle actually looks like, but suffice it to say that it’s awwwweeesssssooooommmeee.
He also LOVES airships. Not just planes, but SHIPS. The kind of mechanical beasts that look like they *live* in the sky, they’re not just visiting. Fortresses. Not featured quite so heavily in his first feature, but it was in Nausicaa, and it is again here. And again, I am here for it. They’re so, soooo much fun. The aerial battles in this film are stunning. I’m not sure I would quite say that they’re MORE impressive than those in Nausicaa, but they are just as good, and even more plentiful.
His protagonists, again, are aaaabsolutely wonderful. Truly. I think he reaches a new level in this film with Sheeta and Pazu. Pazu, in particular, you fall in love with the *second* he comes on screen. That right there is the magic of storytelling, the ability to get your audience to empathize with your hero in a matter of seconds. He’s a scrappy, hard-working, smart, poor-as-dirt kid with dreams of grandeur filling his head. Sheeta is also just wonderful.
Again, the military proves to be the villains. Hayao does some new work here, too, with his main bad guy. More layers. More justification of the evil motives…though still a bit thin in the end. But, definitely BETTER. AND he does something new in that we’re presented with a set of bad guys who don’t turn out to be so bad after all as the story unfolds: the pirates! The mother, particularly, might be Miyazaki’s most interesting character yet. She’s fucking great. Very, very well fleshed out, entertaining, a badass, and surprising.
I mentioned the airships and the castle, but our very first setting also needs to be mentioned, as it is EXQUISITE. My favorite setting of his so far: a mining town that’s stuck in the steam age (with a bit of diesel thrown in, too), and is built into the very sides of the mountain/canyon that it’s mining. That means train trestles galore, aka Ira heaven, and mines and cavers, which Ira also loves. Apparently, he modeled it after the mines and mining towns in Wales, England.
Beyond that, the adventure we get to go on, finding the lost floating Castle of Laputa, something that Pazu’s dad died trying to find, and a place that oddly calls to Sheeta…it’s just awesome. The stuff of legends.
WHAT DIDN’t WORK:
Again, which may have to be the word of this review…I’m hard-pressed to come up with things I didn’t like. It’s been a couple days since I saw the movie, and I can’t really think of anything. Perhaps it’s not quite as EPIC a movie as the last one, but it didn’t need to be, you know? This movie dealt with much more personal issues about character than it did with larger, more depressing issues like environmentalism and the destructive nature of man.
Easily my favorite of his films thus far, I’d have lost my SHIT watching this movie as a kid. And even whilst it doesn’t have the seriousness or scale of Nausicaa, it does still feel grand, and it does still have something very subliminally to say about our world and how we interact with it. It has even more to say about friendship, sacrifice, tenacity, and big dreams. I’d say this is Miyazaki’s first truly excellent children’s film. I loved it.
9 out of 10 – a must see