owl's Moving Castle is the latest film from Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, the writer-director of My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. The new film, like most of Miyazaki's work, mixes elements of fantasy and action, comedy and romance, along with anti-war and pro-environment messages. The story follows a young woman, Sophie (voiced by Emily Mortimer), who meets a mysterious wizard named Howl (voiced by Christian Bale) and embarks with him on the adventure of a lifetime. That adventure sees her transformed into an old woman (now voiced by Jean Simmons) after she's cursed by a witch (voiced by Lauren Bacall) and also riding in Howl's enormous moving castle amidst a brutal war.
Now in limited release in the United States, Howl's Moving Castle has already earned ecstatic reviews—not to mention more than $210 million—in worldwide release. The U.S. version of the film is, image for image, the same as the international version, but the domestic print has been dubbed into English; thus the voices of Mortimer (Scream 3), Simmons (TV's Dark Shadows remake), Bale (Batman Begins), Bacall (Birth) and Billy Crystal (Monsters, Inc.), who provides the punch lines for Calcifer, a temperamental fire demon. And among those helping to make Howl's Moving Castle into an English-language film were director Pete Docter, a familiar Pixar figure who directed Monsters, Inc., and screenwriters Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald H. Hewitt, who also handled the English-language adaptations of Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and other Miyazaki films.
Simmons, Mortimer, Docter and longtime Miyazaki producer Toshio Suzuki recently took time to discuss Howl's Moving Castle with Science Fiction Weekly.
Pete Docter, Pixar reportedly doesn't not have much of a financial stake in the domestic releases of the Miyazaki films. So is Pixar's involvement in these films really just out of everyone's appreciation for his work?
Docter: Yeah, exactly. We're just all big fans of his work, and it's a pleasure to be involved and to hopefully contribute in some way. I think it ends up being sort of a taste thing. I've been involved every step of the way, from translation to casting to directing. And then I was supervising the mix. So it just ended up being kind of a gestalt thing.
Personally speaking, how avid a fan are you of Miyazaki films?
Docter: The first one I ever saw was Totoro, My Neighbor Totoro. I'm not, to be honest, and still to this day, not a huge anime fan. Japanese animation has always been a little bit foreign to me, but his films just spoke to me, and they're so well observed, with all these little details and the way characters behave and act and react to things. The little girl sees this huge, 90-foot-tall Totoro, and adults would scream and run away, but she just runs up and hugs him. That's so true to the way that kids behave completely unexpectedly. So I love his movies.
Toshio Suzuki, what do the people at your company, Studio Ghibli, make of Pixar's productions?
Suzuki (via a translator): We have a lot of the younger animators and young artists who really admire and respect the Pixar films. And in terms of Mr. Miyazaki, not because of Pixar or anything, but he's too old to be greatly influenced by anything. Of course, he likes the Pixar films, but he's kind of stiff. But then younger people, including myself, really love the films. [Also], when I saw Spirited Away, the English version, I really felt, although I do not understand English completely, that the English version was really faithful to the original version. And I thank John Lasseter and the Disney staff and everybody. But I noticed that there was one addition. One line was added to the original film. "Tomorrow, we have school," or something like that. And that is Pixar's philosophy, I really felt.
We have not read the Diana Wynne Jones novel on which the film is based. How similar to the book is the film?
Suzuki: A lot of elements are from the book. For instance, Sophie and the castle and Witch of the Waste (Bacall's character) and the atmospheres of the towns and villages and cities. So the stories are not exactly the same, but the essence of the book is incorporated into the film.
What would you say you have discovered about the differences between U.S. animation and Japanese animation by collaborating with Pixar on several films?
Suzuki: I've realized that in America animation is made by a lot of people. A lot of people are involved. And in Japan, actually, it's done by one person or one director. I knew that, but it's really made me think about the differences in the production system.
Emily Mortimer, you no doubt know your film history. How excited were you to share the responsibility of voicing Sophie with two-time Oscar nominee Jean Simmons?
Mortimer: I couldn't believe my luck. It was incredible. I got it completely in the most fortuitous way. They put different actresses' voices together. At one point in the film, we sort of coincide. We morph into each other. And so they tested my voice up against Jean's. And I think it turned out to be the most similar, or something. I was very lucky.
What would you say were the greatest challenges in doing this project?
Mortimer: In the love scenes, [you had] to be incredibly fast. And to fit in with somebody's lips, you having to really concentrate so hard. [The ADR process] was only a day and a half [because she was looping new dialogue to match existing footage]. It's really intense. It's scene after scene after scene. And you have to really concentrate on getting into the moment.
What's your sense of how Miyazaki animated films are different from most other animated features?
Mortimer: I guess the major difference is that Miyazaki is an auteur himself, which is kind of rare nowadays, even in [live-action] movies. He writes, produces, draws, conceives ... all of it. So it just does really feel like one man, and [one man with] an incredible imagination. There's just something very exciting about being let into this world that you couldn't otherwise have access to. But I really feel that animated films are really some of the best that are being made now, even in our culture. My son [who's almost 2 years old] is completely addicted to Finding Nemo, and I can probably quote you the entire film.
Jean Simmons, you don't act very much these days. So what led to your participation in Howl's Moving Castle?
Simmons: Well, I heard about it from my agent. He said, "Would you like to do a feature cartoon character?" And I said, "Yes, I would love to. I've never been asked to do that before." I did the voice[-over] for Mysteries of the Bible, but that was not a cartoon character. That was not a character. But this is something new, and it was quite an experience. I had just such a good time. And the people I worked with are not so bad, either.
How exciting was it for you, after all these years in the business, to find something in the realm of what you do that you'd never done before?
Simmons: It was very exciting. You're always learning, every time you work. Every time you work, you learn something. But this was, whoa, totally different. You could forget about what you look like, and when you're making these noises that they needed ... I had to do a lot of screaming at one point. I think it deepened my voice even more (than it already is). I haven't got it back up yet. I just found it very exciting, and maybe we were spoiled, because we had the most wonderful crew directing us.
Would you say it's easier or more difficult to do voice-over work, as you never actually worked with any of your co-stars?
Simmons: You don't have time to think about it, because you're so busy looking at the screen and the mouth [of your character] to try and fit in the English words to the Japanese version, plus the body movements and all that. So you don't have time to think, "Oh, I wish there was another actor here to talk to."
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