After a day of hard work cleaning the castle, Sophie and Markl stretch out washed laundry on a field and reward themselves with sandwiches and tea. Food, though, is a wholesome comfort and a bonding ritual. There are other, more dangerous, forms of ingestion within the film, notably the fact that Howl has gained many of his magical abilities by consuming a falling star, losing his heart in the process. (“You only get one ‘cause the rest are dirty!”) These misfit boys desperately need Sophie, a stabilizing addition to their oddball family. The castle’s lack of organization can be summed up in Markl offering Sophie a choice between two spoons and a fork. “I can’t remember the last time we had a real breakfast!” says Markl, slurping down his eggs, indicating that despite the plentiful kitchen, Howl runs a household that prioritizes magic (and up-keeping his blond hair-dye job) over cooking and other domestic responsibilities. He cracks each egg one-handed with the practiced elegance of Julia Child and feeds the shells to Calcifer, a small but eloquent illustration of their symbiotic relationship. In true baconnoisseur fashion, he uses the pork grease to fry the eggs (a man after my own artery-clogged heart). Sophie requests the kettle for tea, and Markl, who previously disregarded Sophie’s authority, now obeys without question.Įnter Howl, smoothly nudging Sophie out of the way. Her command over the fire, the binding element of the castle and of any home, makes it clear that she is Howl’s match (pun intended – later in the film, Calcifer literally uses Sophie’s hair as fuel). This domestic power dynamic is lost on Sophie, who responds by taking a frying pan off the wall, forcing it onto the protesting fire demon, and sizzling a thick slice of bacon. When Sophie asks him why he doesn’t want a hot breakfast, he says, “We can’t use the fire, Master Howl’s not here… Calcifer only obeys master Howl.” Markl takes a loaf from the drawer and a wedge of cheese from the table. Although he seems annoyed by Sophie’s presence, Markl’s move to break bread is the first signifier that he’ll accept her into his life. He and Howl are obviously used to a surplus of food, since they don’t attend to the practicalities of storing it efficiently. Markl examines a table overflowing with vegetables, eggs, and a milk jug full of sausages. Taken in as a cleaning lady, Sophie settles into the idyllic steampunk smorgasbord that is the walking castle, along with the wizard Howl, his kid apprentice Markl and the fire demon Calcifer. Howl’s follows Sophie, an 18-year-old milliner transformed into a 90-year old woman. In Howl’s Moving Castle, the mundane task of preparing breakfast becomes a study of family dynamics, wrapped in the microcosm of preparing and sharing a meal. Miyazaki always makes time for the humdrum banalities of his characters’ lives, as they clean, commute to work, and cook and eat meals. Miyazaki’s films are well-known for their feminist and environmentalist themes, but also for the attention he gives to commonplace, routine moments that other storytellers leave out. In lieu of twiddling our thumbs while we wait for the North American release of Mami Sunada’s Ghibli documentary, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, we’re reliving one of Hayao Miyazaki’s greatest films, and mourning the fact that the beloved director has decided to retire for good (though hopeful rumors say he may return to work on short films). From Chocolat to Chef, from Tarantino to Miyazaki, from The Trip to, well, The Trip to Italy… you’ll never watch a dinner table scene in the same way again.įormer Studio Ghibli president Toshio Suzuki announced recently that the company will soon be undergoing a structural overhaul, a statement that has fans nervous about the fate of the legendary Japanese anime studio. In Feast for the Eyes, we seek to chart the gastronomic iconography of the screen, move forward from simple fantasies of edibility, and ponder instead the depths of narrative, character and theme that a simple pastry can encode between its buttery layers.
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