An Area the Size of Wales
Sep. 20th, 2022 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI am a very sporadic user of FaceBook, so it was a piece of pure good fortune that I learned from steepholm that she would be in Newcastle giving a talk at Seven Stories called An Area the Size of Wales: the Erasure of Howl's Homeland from Hayao Miyazaki's 'Howl's Moving Castle'.
It's a great topic - by which I mean, of course, something I had wondered about when I saw the film; I have posted before about enjoying hearingsteepholm speak about Diana Wynne Jones and what her use of place gives to her readers; and her current dispatches about how British children's literature is perceived in Japan are a highlight of my friends' page. Obviously I ws going to be there...
Last Thursdaydurham_rambler dropped me off at Seven Stories, and went off to spend the early evening with S. Afterwards, he collected me, and we dined with S. at the Italian restaurant at the end of her road. So that all worked very well.
The talk also worked very well. I learned things I had not previously known about the film: that Studio Ghibli had initially seemed keen to echo the locations of the book, and consulted the author about where they were (and I got to see the letter in which DWJ described this meeting to her agent); but that when Miyazaki replaced Hosoda as director, he brought in the 'war' theme which dominates the second half of the film, because he was concerned about war in general and the Iraq war in particular. This makes sense. I always think in terms of the book, so I had assumed that Miyazaki had had difficulties with the Welsh material, and brought in the war sequences to fill the gap: and I had thought this a bad choice, because the war scenes are so powerful that they drag the narrative out of shape. But if it's the other way round, if the war is the narrative that Miyazaki wants to tell... Oh, well, then that's his decision. And I accept that there would be problems translating Howl's Welshness and Welsh family to the screen, not because they are too exotic but because they are too mundane. The joy of the book is that by sticking closely to Sophie's point of view, it is able to describe scenes which she sees as utterly strange, while inviting the reader to see them as very like their own daily life. This is why books are better ...
I still regret the film's omission of Donne's Song, though. I said as much tosteepholm after the talk, and she thought few readers would miss it. Maybe, though I don't think you have to be particularly expert to enjoy it as a piece of magical language. Michael thinks it is a spell, and I first learned it, when I was about Michael's age, from the singing of John Renbourn. I was particularly struck on this re-read (because of course the other great joy of the talk is that it provided an excuse to re-read Howl's Moving Castle, and to follow it up with the sequels) by just how neatly the events of the story carry out the lines of the verse, and how important it is to the plot. It is Sophie's transformation that leads you into the story, and I love that so much that I may not previously have paid enough attention to the symmetry here: Howl and Sophie are both under curses.
Two brief notes for my own benefit, because this journal is my virtual memory. First,steepholm points out that the architecture and military uniforms of the film place it in a sort of fairytale central Europe (she compared a screenshot with a photograph of Riquewihr). It's not just Wales that has been erased but England too (she associates Ingary with England, while to me it chimes with Hungary). This struck me strongly while I was reading Castle in the Air, and I hope to come back to that later. Second, she suggests a Welsh analogue for the moving castle itself, the tall black castle blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall thin turrets: could it be a power station (think Battersea, for example)? Could it? I don't know. The castle always seems to be too tall for its size (possibly because its upper stories are pure illusion), which doesn't quite fit. But I keep coming back to the image, all the same.
steepholm that she would be in Newcastle giving a talk at Seven Stories called An Area the Size of Wales: the Erasure of Howl's Homeland from Hayao Miyazaki's 'Howl's Moving Castle'. It's a great topic - by which I mean, of course, something I had wondered about when I saw the film; I have posted before about enjoying hearing
steepholm speak about Diana Wynne Jones and what her use of place gives to her readers; and her current dispatches about how British children's literature is perceived in Japan are a highlight of my friends' page. Obviously I ws going to be there...Last Thursday
durham_rambler dropped me off at Seven Stories, and went off to spend the early evening with S. Afterwards, he collected me, and we dined with S. at the Italian restaurant at the end of her road. So that all worked very well.The talk also worked very well. I learned things I had not previously known about the film: that Studio Ghibli had initially seemed keen to echo the locations of the book, and consulted the author about where they were (and I got to see the letter in which DWJ described this meeting to her agent); but that when Miyazaki replaced Hosoda as director, he brought in the 'war' theme which dominates the second half of the film, because he was concerned about war in general and the Iraq war in particular. This makes sense. I always think in terms of the book, so I had assumed that Miyazaki had had difficulties with the Welsh material, and brought in the war sequences to fill the gap: and I had thought this a bad choice, because the war scenes are so powerful that they drag the narrative out of shape. But if it's the other way round, if the war is the narrative that Miyazaki wants to tell... Oh, well, then that's his decision. And I accept that there would be problems translating Howl's Welshness and Welsh family to the screen, not because they are too exotic but because they are too mundane. The joy of the book is that by sticking closely to Sophie's point of view, it is able to describe scenes which she sees as utterly strange, while inviting the reader to see them as very like their own daily life. This is why books are better ...
I still regret the film's omission of Donne's Song, though. I said as much to
steepholm after the talk, and she thought few readers would miss it. Maybe, though I don't think you have to be particularly expert to enjoy it as a piece of magical language. Michael thinks it is a spell, and I first learned it, when I was about Michael's age, from the singing of John Renbourn. I was particularly struck on this re-read (because of course the other great joy of the talk is that it provided an excuse to re-read Howl's Moving Castle, and to follow it up with the sequels) by just how neatly the events of the story carry out the lines of the verse, and how important it is to the plot. It is Sophie's transformation that leads you into the story, and I love that so much that I may not previously have paid enough attention to the symmetry here: Howl and Sophie are both under curses.Two brief notes for my own benefit, because this journal is my virtual memory. First,
steepholm points out that the architecture and military uniforms of the film place it in a sort of fairytale central Europe (she compared a screenshot with a photograph of Riquewihr). It's not just Wales that has been erased but England too (she associates Ingary with England, while to me it chimes with Hungary). This struck me strongly while I was reading Castle in the Air, and I hope to come back to that later. Second, she suggests a Welsh analogue for the moving castle itself, the tall black castle blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall thin turrets: could it be a power station (think Battersea, for example)? Could it? I don't know. The castle always seems to be too tall for its size (possibly because its upper stories are pure illusion), which doesn't quite fit. But I keep coming back to the image, all the same.
