Let me start out by saying that Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle is one of my all-time favorite marvelous terrific films, viewable over and over. And I say film, advisedly. It does not fall into any particular genre (anime, animation, fantasy), although it partakes of all of these. It belongs right up there with great feature films of all time. It's not an accident that Miyazaki's earlier Spirited Away won the best animated feature Oscar in its year, 2003. There is no substitute for seeing them yourself, if you haven't, or seeing them again, if you have (they both bear re-watching very well).
I bought the original book of Howl's Moving Castle just because I've approached the movie from every other possible angle, including the Studio Ghibli book on the art of the film, which contains the entire filmscript as well as the pictures.
As one would have to do to translate a book into a feature-length movie (one film contains script/story material of roughly one short story, so a novel of necessity has to be changed, pared down, maybe characters combined or omitted, some scenes ditto, and maybe even new material put into the place of old material which has been deleted), Miyazaki has begun with characters and situations present in the novel (a wizard Howl with a moving castle, a Sophie who is changed into an old lady, the Witch of the Waste casting a spell out of jealousy, Calcifer, the hat shop, the gushing stepmother, the attractive sister Lettie) and lifted them out of the more complex novel (Sophie has two sisters in the novel, and there are many other differences and complications -- including that Markl is a young man of 15 named Michael and a rival at one point with Howl for Lettie's attentions, and Howl has a sister back in 'our world' -- Wales, in fact -- who has a family herself. Howl's name in Wales is Howell Jenkins; and many other differences).
I note that Christian Bale (who does the English-language voice of Howl) is Welsh, although in the featurette about the English-language voiceovers, they chose him (Bale, himself a wizard of a thousand accents, gives Howl's voice as a US voice without any regionalization) as an actor who could present an unusual character (unusual to the US -- a hero without being a he-man, one who calls himself a coward during the film, although he's actually quite brave when confronted, and says his strategy for dealing with problems is to run away) to the US audience convincingly. They picked him, they said, after seeing his success in Batman Begins -- who, I note, is another widely-accepted American 'hero' who overcomes his fears in order to battle fiercely.
My point is: Miyazaki has transformed and streamlined the story to concentrate on Howl and Sophie, with Howl's castle and Calcifer, and changed somewhat the role of the Witch of the Waste, and created the Madam Sulieman character out of other characters, and made the war over the missing Prince a major factor in the film, showing Howl's character development and role as a lone struggler against the war's depredations. If there can be said to be a Miyazaki original 'message' or 'theme' in the film, it's the one about the pointlessness and destructiveness of war, and how the war has no real reason that justifies the war itself. In the book as well as the film Sophie does find a way to set Calcifer free and give back Howl's heart, and Calcifer does return afterwards because he likes them (and because it's starting to rain). And Sophie and Howl do get together.
But let me say this: the book is a much more lightweight confection than the film, shelved in the 'teens' section of the bookstore when I bought my copy, clever and inventive, but not terribly deep, nor intended to be. It's filled with literary allusions and references that are well-handled and integrated into the plot, and also many plot twists and reversals that seem to my eye more busy than substantive, although they all have to do with and lead to the final unravelling of what's been going on. And while Sophie has to solve the basic mystery of the Howl-Calcifer relationship in the book, too, she stumbles along there from minor calamity to minor calamity, not learning much about herself while doing so, until at the end of the book things are cleared up all at once (not without a struggle). By contrast, Miyazaki's film has transformed the materials and characters of this book into a brilliant, moving, beautiful film with amazing depths, the work of a true genius. Beautifully crafted, beautifully produced, both visually and in terms of story and character. Amazing, astounding, incomparable.
Go see it.
8:00:34 AM 
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