ayao Miyazaki is fascinated with flight, and it's a common
motif in his films. Laputa takes that motif into mania. The film
opens with a battle between two stylized dirigibles: a vast liner filled
with passengers in simple Victorian-style dress, and a small pirate ship
that swoops in for a raid. In the scuffle, a young girl named Sheeta
attempts to escape out of her stateroom window and falls into the clouds
below.
In a vast mining town, a young boy named Pazu sees the girl float
down from the sky, unconscious and wearing a strange glowing pendant. He
takes her home, cares for her until she wakes up, and shows her around his
house. They're both orphans, used to living on their own, but where he's
become a mechanic and a jack-of-all-trades, she's become a pawn in a power
struggle between the government and the pirate band. Her necklace, she
explains, is a family heirloom, and its powers and nature are unknown to
her. But circumstantial evidence links it to Laputa, a legendary castle
that hangs in the sky.
Pazu is thrilled. He has a photo of a sky-castle shrouded in clouds,
taken by his aviator father during a strange storm. The photograph was
dismissed as a fake, and Pazu's father eventually died discredited and
bitter. Pazu's life goal is to find the floating castle and validate his
father's work. But he's not the only one interested in Laputa. The
government, the army and the pirates arrive in short order and begin
tearing the town apart. Chases, races and vast destruction ensue, with Pazu
and Sheeta mostly one step ahead, occasionally one step behind. They're
separated, reunited, captured, attacked, recruited and abused by the adults
racing to find the hidden city. Some of them want treasure, some want
Laputa's technological secrets. Pazu wants adventure, Sheeta just wants to
be left in peace. What starts out as a mystery rapidly turns into something
halfway between a grand-scale adventure and a caper movie.
"...I knew something wonderful had begun."
Laputa is not currently available in English; a trailer on Buena
Vista's release of Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service promised a
1999 U.S. video dubbed release which has yet to surface. Reportedly Disney
is considering a theatrical release first. It would be well worth it.
Laputa on the big screen reveals a striking wealth of visual detail
that disappears on video, and simultaneously highlights the conflicts of
size and scale that comprise one of the film's most striking elements.
Like Kiki and Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, Laputa
is a rollicking, charming film, suitable for children and adult animation
buffs alike. For kids, it's an exciting and fast-paced (though lengthy)
adventure, full of irrepressible characters and boundless energy. For
grownups, it's a magnificently animated, powerfully written allegory about
humanity's relationship with technology and the environment. Pazu's mining
town, the army castle where Sheeta is imprisoned, and Laputa itself are all
gigantic multidimensional worlds. Miyazaki makes creative use of
three-dimensional space, extending the children's environment deep into the
earth and miles into the sky. Pazu and Sheeta are tiny grains of
individuality, dwarfed by their surroundings, but they're still critically
important to their world and capable of making a significant impact. It's a
buoyant and life-affirming message, and one that sets the tone for the
film's conflicts.
It's hard to fear too much for the world of Laputa, even in the
wake of world-changing technology and world-destroying ambition. With only
one exception, the film's villains are comic set-pieces, more bark than
bite, and more giggle than bark. They may be able to hurt each other, or
hurt the children, but they're too small to hurt the vast world they live
in. It exists on a scale apart from them. As a result, Laputa is an
epic-scale movie in an epic-scale world, but it never loses its
immediate, human focus. Like so much of Miyazaki's work, it makes a point
of the joy of living without overtly discussing life.
