08.05.07
Tales from Earthsea
My cousin Jenny told me that a Studio Ghibli version of Tales from Earthsea was in production when I was up in Scotland. When I arrived back in London we did an internet search and discovered a little more about it – it’s out in Japan, it’s had some mixed reviews, and the English language version won’t be out until 2009. Then we did some more searching and discovered that the English language version is actually already out and currently screening in London, it just won’t reach the United States until 2009 because of TV rights. In fact, it was screening right up the road from us in north London that very night, so we decided to go along.
The movie was an odd combination of the third novel The Farthest Shore and the fourth one Tehanu. I usually prefer to see anime with Japanese voices and English subtitles but this was dubbed and it was decent enough, especially Willem Dafoe as the evil sorceror.
Studio Ghibli is the Japanese anime studio responsible for treasures such as Howl’s Moving Castle (an adaptation of a Diana Wynne Jones novel) and Spirited Away but Tales from Earthsea is the first film by the son, Goro Miyazaki, not the father, Hayao. The film has been criticised by Ursula Le Guin, the author of the books for being incoherent, heavy-handed and untrue to the books. Her criticism is interesting to read and it is clear she is quite frustrated by both the process and the way things turned out.
I didn’t think the movie was bad but it wasn’t especially interesting either. I wouldn’t say it was incoherent – it was all perfectly intelligible, unlike many Japanese anime movies. However, that was almost the problem as it felt flat; there was no subtext, little exploration of characters’ motivations, and quite a few clunky, Hallmark moments. It was basically just a kids’ movie. The animation was okay but not quite as beautiful as other Ghibli films, although I did especially like the cityscape and the horse. It bears little resemblance to the books but it had some nice moments. The song was beautiful – though I would have liked to hear it in Japanese rather than English, if possible.
The experience was compounded by the shabby state of the Odeon Cinema in Swiss Cottage. The theatre had a faint aroma of old vomit and the colours on screen were washed out – I don’t know what the film was meant to look like but the Vodafone ad in the pre-film advertising was a washed-out orange rather than a deep scarlet. The tickets were £9 a pop, on par with West End prices, so I intend to make a complaint if I can get my act together to do so.
