I don't review films. A good reviewer
explains to the reviewee the technical and other relevant elements
that create the personal response evoked in the reviewer.
In the case of the Miyazaki film, Howl's Moving Castle, my personal response was to recognize the stunning quality of the graphics and to experience total bafflement at the subject matter. More over, I have no idea how the technology of the film making, nor the contributions of the director created my bafflement. It all seems like a cultural disconnect.
I've spent more than thirty years visiting Japan and studying Japan. Along comes Howl's Moving Castle and I clearly know that I learned little or nothing to help me understand the film.
While in Japan last month, I went to Miyazaki's scaled down version of Disneyland: Ghibli House. Miyazaki clearly borrows from America and Europe as he goes to great lengths to explain at Ghibli. Disney is easy for me to recognize, the Triplets of Bellville are equally easy. Miyazaki, definitely is not comprehensible to me. The core base for his images are not in my repetorire.
Worse than the absence of a connection
to Miyazaki's core imagery in Howl's is a complete disconnect from his moral
storyline.
In Miyazki's Spirited Away I can recognize many of the Japanese Shinto behaviors, spirits, approbations, myths and values as well as images. I recognize them and I am stunningly aware that I don't understand them. The monster in Spirited Away was a gentle soul who was dirty. In Japan, the land of the ultra-clean, dirty is a recognizable sign of evil. One of the monsters in Howl's Moving Castle is the Witch of the Waste, some parallels but very hard to see.
I can only express my bafflement and true wonder at this cinematic insight into cultural difference that this film offers. Miyazaki is pure Japanese. Spirited Away was, like the Star Wars series is to America, the cultural triumph of Japaneseness; the largest grossing movie in Japan, ever.