Castle in the Sky

aka Laputa: Castle in the Sky. 1986. Movie. 120 min. Science fiction/adventure. dir Hayao Miyazaki. scr Hayao Miyazaki. mus Joe Hisaishi. -bc

A second Miyazaki masterwork, following Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. A grand, sweeping adventure with a boy and girl at the heart of it, lots of retro technology, and the magnificent floating lost civilization of Laputa.

Pazu, a boy in a Northern European mining town in the early 20th century, rescues a girl named Sheeta, who has fallen from an airship and been saved from death by the levitating powers of a mysterious stone pendant she wears. The two are soon on the run from a band of pirate brothers led by their mother, Dola, and from government agents and soldiers led by Colonel Muska, whose airship Sheeta was trying to escape when she fell. After the two are captured by Muska and the soldiers, Sheeta agrees to cooperate in using the stone to locate Laputa, a legendary island kingdom floating in the sky, but only if Muska releases Pazu. Sheeta is revealed to be the heiress of the dynasty that once ruled Laputa and only she can trigger the powers of the stone.

Pazu is grabbed by Dola and her pirate sons but he offers to help them find Laputa if they help him rescue Sheeta from Muska. At the castle fortress where Muska and his men are stationed, Muska shows off a damaged robot warrior that had fallen from Laputa. In Sheeta’s presence the robot reactivates and immediately sets out to protect Sheeta from the soldiers. As the soldiers and the robot are battling, Pazu and Dola sweep in and effect a daring rescue of Sheeta. Eventually, Pazu and his party fly the pirate airship, the Tiger Moth, in a desperate race to get to Laputa before the Goliath, the heavily fortified craft carrying Muska and an army of soldiers.

Pazu and Sheeta, flying in a reconnaissance glider, are the first to touch down on Laputa and find a collection of spectacular ruins overrun by vegetation and wildlife and one lone still-functioning robot caretaker. Almost immediately, the two must hide from Muska and his men, who have taken Dola and family captive and landed on Laputa. Muska captures Sheeta and forces her to join him as he gains access to Laputa’s inner chambers and the giant crystal that powers the island. Muska demonstrates its destructive power by shooting a ray down to Earth that causes an atomic-style explosion in the ocean. When it looks like Muska will gain mastery over the crystal, Sheeta remembers an ancient spell passed down to her. . . .

Pazu and Sheeta have two of the most endearing and remarkable faces in anime history. The entire film is carried in those faces—everything that happens and everything that can happen. The right combination of lines can often produce magic. Most of the other characters are fairly straightforward in design, except for Dola, the pirate mother, who has the exaggerated look of a malevolent cartoon witch. But as we get to know her we see her eyes twinkle and her mouth curl up in a little smile as she eavesdrops on Pazu and Sheeta in conversation, and we see the mother, the woman behind that fearsome visage.

Looking forward to the retro-techno look of early 21st-century anime like R.O.D., Last Exile, and Steamboy, not to mention Miyazaki’s own Howl’s Moving Castle, Castle in the Sky offers lots of steam power and propeller-driven aircraft in its alternate-universe early-20th-century European setting. The pirates use little flying craft called “flaptors,” motor-powered but with wings that flap like insect wings. Much of the vaguely era-appropriate gadgetry is quite clever, including a system of tubes to facilitate communication aboard the Tiger Moth, the airship HQ of the pirate band. There is also a crow’s nest on top of the ship that releases and unfolds wings to serve as a reconnaissance glider. It even has a phone line to the ship. Once broken free of the ship by the fierce winds, it is this glider that allows Pazu and Sheeta to first set foot on Laputa.

All the massive man-made structures in the film are depicted with great detail, starting with the mine where Pazu works and the mining town carved into a mountain, with its rows of houses, railroads, bridges, and tunnels. Muska’s impregnable stone fortress, a remnant of a centuries-old regime, is the site of a fiery battle between the soldiers and a dormant robot warrior. And then there are the intricately designed chambers of Laputa itself, an extraordinarily beautiful place, a once-great city of stone structures, towers, halls, palaces, and gardens, all now covered over by vegetation, wildlife, and flowers. Even the one functioning caretaker robot has a layer of grass on it and birds perching on its shoulders. At the heart and living core of Laputa is a huge, ancient tree, with roots spreading throughout the interior of the floating island. It looks forward to the camphor tree in which resides the title character of My Neighbor Totoro.

The success of Miyazaki’s previous film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, led to the formation of Studio Ghibli by Miyazaki and his partners Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki. Castle in the Sky was Ghibli’s first production and was followed by a string of hits that number among the best-loved anime classics the world over, including six subsequent features written and directed by Miyazaki, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Princess Mono­noke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle.

Castle in the Sky is a classic tale of youthful innocence and essential goodness overcoming adult greed and corruption. Unlimited power is available to whoever controls Laputa, the single-minded goal of Colonel Muska, yet Pazu and Sheeta have no desire for such power and fear the harm that will result if grown-ups attain it. Both kids come from simpler lives and settings, Pazu from a mining town and Sheeta from a farm, and only wish that their lives not be disrupted. From the second Pazu rescues Sheeta, a bond is created that keeps them together from that moment on, if only in spirit during those instances when they’re forcibly kept apart. Theirs is a sweet, youthful, innocent, chaste romance, but it’s a great love nonetheless. When they embrace in moments of joy (as when they land on Laputa), the romantic quality is extremely moving. Pazu and Sheeta provide the emotional glue that holds Castle together during all of its turbulent journey from Europe to the floating island of Laputa itself.

It’s also a classic adventure story involving pirates, trains, cars, tanks, cannons, battles, airships, robots, races after treasure, and soaring flights above the Earth. There is plenty of action, a story packed with suspense, and a set of formidable villains, led by Muska and General Mouroa, as well as some bad-guys-turned-good in the persons of Dola and her pirate sons. There are spectacular chases, as when, early on, Pazu and Sheeta ride in a coal-powered train pursued by Dola and the pirates, first in a motor car and then in a train car. There are scenes of combat, as when the inactive robot warrior found by Muska on Earth suddenly reawakens in Sheeta’s presence and sets out to follow its program and protect the Laputan royal heiress, despite the superior firepower of the General’s army. This sequence contains one of the most breathtaking bits of action in the entire film—the rescue of Sheeta as she stands atop the castle walls amidst fiery explosions and a damaged robot warrior trying desperately to shield her from the soldiers. With Dola flying the flaptor and Pazu hanging by his feet to grab Sheeta with his hands, Sheeta leaps off the wall, catches Pazu’s hands and flies off with her rescuers.

There are hundreds of beautiful shots in the film. When the opening credits end, as the music continues, Sheeta is seen falling through the clouds to certain death, until her stone pendant lights up and slowly breaks her fall, keeping her aloft and floating slowly, safely to Earth and the waiting arms of a startled, curious Pazu. As is typical of Miyazaki, nature abounds and is depicted with great loving care, whether in the cloud formations the ships fly through, the farmlands the characters fly over, or the overgrown vegetation and wildlife on Laputa. Viewers can feel the experience of the characters, as when Pazu and Sheeta huddle together under a warm blanket at night in the cold of the ship’s crow’s nest high above the Earth, ever vigilant of the pursuing Goliath while seeking a cloud-covered shape that could be Laputa. The action is enhanced throughout by Joe Hisaishi’s majestic music score, with its Laputa theme (reprised as a song over the end credits) and a host of other stirring melodies infusing the action with emotion throughout.

Many of the scenes already cited stand out as highlights, most notably the opening scene of Pazu catching Sheeta, and her hair-raising rescue from the burning fortress midway through the film.

One lengthy, magnificently rendered suspense scene takes place as the Tiger Moth, carrying Pazu, Sheeta, and company, flies into a storm to avoid an attack by the pursuing airship, the Goliath. Every detail of the clouds is vividly re-created as the ship flies through and above them, with shadows cast on the cloud surfaces by the ships and the dim shape of the pursuing Goliath made out in the cloud below.

When Pazu and Sheeta first set down on Laputa and throw themselves on the grass after a joyous embrace, they spot a giant robot slowly trudging toward them and are unsure whether it’s a threat or not. The robot wants to pick up their glider and move it a few feet to avoid disturbing the bird’s nest it landed on. This gesture offers a subtle but beautiful expression of how nature can tame technology.

Laputa was the name of a floating island in Jonathan Swift’s 1726 satire, Gulliver’s Travels, a reference Pazu makes in the film. The name came from the Spanish words, la puta (the whore), a fact Miyazaki claimed not to know when he titled his film.

Teto, the scampering little yellow-and-brown-striped fox-squirrel creature with sharp teeth who was Nausicaä’s pet in Nausicaä has cousins living on Laputa, who scamper all over the one still-active robot.

The town where Pazu lives was modeled on a mining town in Wales.

Hisaishi’s score was reorchestrated and rerecorded with a larger orchestra for the English dub. There are noticeable differences in some sections of the score.

violence Lots of destruction in the chase scenes, but no seeming injury or death. In the big battle on Laputa at the end, the structure crumbles underneath many of the soldiers who fall, presumably, to their deaths.